Arthur Porth, a Wichita, Kansas, building contractor, files a claim in a Kansas court to recover his income tax payment of $151. Porth argues that the 16th Amendment is unconstitutional because it places the taxpayer in a position of involuntary servitude contrary to the 13th Amendment. The court rules against Porth, but the defeat does not stop him. For 16 years Porth continues battling the income tax requirement, finding new and inventive challenges to the practice. He claims that the 16th Amendment “put[s] Americans into economic bondage to the international bankers,” a claim that the Southern Poverty Law Center will call “a thinly veiled anti-Semitic reference to the supposed ‘international Jewish banking conspiracy.’” He also argues that because paper money is not backed by gold or silver, taxpayers are not obligated to pay their taxes because “Federal Reserve notes are not dollars.” In 1961, Porth files an income tax return that is blank except for a statement declaring that he is pleading the Fifth Amendment, essentially claiming that filling out a tax return violates his right of protection from self-incrimination, a scheme that quickly becomes popular among anti-tax protesters. Porth becomes an activist and garners something of a following among right-wing audiences, traveling around the country distributing tax protest literature that includes a book, A Manual for Those Who Think That They Must Pay an Income Tax. He even issues his own “arrest warrants” against “bureaucrats” whom, in his view, violate the Constitution. In 1967, Porth is convicted of a number of tax evasion charges, but, as the Anti-Defamation League will later write, “he had already become a grass-roots hero to the nascent tax protest movement.” His cause is championed by, among others, William Potter Gale, who will go on to found the racist, anti-government Posse Comitatus movement (see 1969). Gale uses the newsletter of his Ministry of Christ Church, a church espousing the racist and anti-Semitic theology of Christian Identity (see 1960s and After), to promote Porth and the early tax rebellion movement. Porth exhausts his appeals and goes to jail; though sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, he only serves 77 days. One of Porth’s most active followers is his lawyer, Jerome Daly, whose activism eventually leads to his disbarment (see December 9, 1968 and After). Daly meets Porth in 1965 and files his own “protest” tax return just days before Porth is indicted by a grand jury. Daly is also convicted of tax evasion; in 1969, a federal appeals court will issue a ruling invalidating what has by then become known as the “Porth-Daly Fifth Amendment Return.” Porth receives the support of several far-right organizations, many of whom tie their racist views into his anti-tax protests. In a 1967 article for the far-right American Mercury magazine, tax protester and editor Martin A. Larson writes, “The negroes in the United States are increasing at a rate at least twice as great as the rest of the population,” and warns that the tax burden posed by blacks “unquestionably doomed… the American way of life.” Larson will later write regular columns for the white supremacist magazine The Spotlight, in which he will call black women prostitutes whose “offspring run wild in the streets, free to forage their food in garbage cans, and grow up to become permanent reliefers, criminals, rioters, looters, and, in turn, breeders of huge litters of additional human beings belonging to the same category.” He will also write several books promoting Porth’s anti-tax protest strategies. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

A Time magazine profile lambasts the racist, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS—see December 2011), in what is many Americans’ first exposure to the group. It delineates the organization’s penchant for secrecy, its domination by its “dictatorial” leader, Robert Welch, and its hardline battle against almost every element of the federal government as “agents of Communism.” Forty to 60 percent of the federal government is controlled by Communism, the JBS believes. Time calls the organization “a tiresome, comic-opera joke” that nonetheless has cells in 35 states and an ever-widening influence. In Wichita, Kansas, JBS student members are trained to inform their cell leaders of “Communist” influences they may detect in their classroom lectures, and the offending teacher is berated by parents. A Wichita businessman who wanted to give a donation to the University of Wichita decided not to donate after being hounded by local JBS members, who wanted the university to fire professors and remove selected books from its library. “My business would be wrecked,” the businessman explains, “if those people got on the phone and kept on yelling that I am a Communist because I give money to the school.” Nashville, Tennessee, JBS members organize community members to verbally attack neighbors whom they suspect of Communist affiliations. JBS’s current priority, Time writes, is to bring about the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Welch, who obtained his wealth from his brother’s candymaking business, believes that Social Security and the federal income tax are all part of the “creeping socialism” that is taking over the federal government. He retired from the business in 1957 and founded the JBS shortly thereafter, naming it for a US Navy captain killed by Chinese Communist guerrillas after the end of World War II. Welch’s seminal tract, “The Politician,” accuses President Eisenhower and his brother Milton Eisenhower of being Communist plants, and accuses both men of treason against the nation. [Time, 3/10/1961]

The transformative Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes Congress. The law makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, or gender in voting, public places, the workplace, and schools. Former President John F. Kennedy had argued for new civil rights legislation, saying that previous legislative efforts (see August 29, 1957 and May 6, 1960) did not go far enough. Kennedy waited until 1963 to send his legislation to Congress, and was assassinated before the bill was passed. On June 11, 1963, Kennedy told the public, “The negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one-third as much chance of completing college; one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much.” His successor, Lyndon Johnson, a conservative Southern Democrat, surprised many by pushing the bill instead of falling in line with conservative Southern Democrats who opposed it. Johnson and Senate leaders successfully fought back a filibuster by Senator Richard Russell (D-GA) and 17 other segregationist Democratic senators who tried to derail the bill; it passed the Senate on a 73-24 vote. Some believe that the passage of the bill is one of the major legislative acts that drives many Southern Democrats to leave the party for the increasingly conservative venue of the Republican Party. The word “sex,” to prohibit gender-based discrimination, was added to the legislation at the last minute by Representative Howard W. Smith (D-VA), and some accused Smith of inserting the provision as a means to kill the entire bill. Smith argued that he was supportive of efforts by women’s rights organizations, and inserted the language in a sincere effort to curb discrimination against women. Smith is joined by Representative Martha W. Griffiths (D-MI) in keeping the provision in the bill. Perhaps the most significant provision of the bill is the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), charged with implementing the law. The EEOC will use the practice of “affirmative action” to curb discrimination, including mandating hiring of minorities and women to alleviate many employers’ practice of hiring white males almost exclusively, especially for more senior positions. President Johnson will extend his support to “affirmative action,” and is perhaps the first public figure to use the phrase in addressing the public. [Spartacus Schoolnet, 2008; National Archives, 2012; American Civil Liberties Union, 2012]

Roger Ailes (left) and Richard Nixon in a 1968 photo. [Source: White House Photo Office / Rolling Stone]Roger Ailes, the media consultant for the Richard Nixon presidential campaign, decides that Nixon should, during a televised town hall, take a staged question from a “good, mean, Wallaceite cab driver.” Ailes is referring to the overtly racist third-party candidacy of Governor George Wallace (D-AL). Ailes suggests “[s]ome guy to sit there and say, ‘Awright, Mac, what about these n_ggers?’” According to Nixonland author Rick Pearlstein, the idea is to have Nixon “abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a ‘moderate’ version of the opinion.” [Pearlstein, 5/2008, pp. 331; Media Matters, 7/22/2011] The suggestion is not used. Ailes will go on to found Fox News (see October 7, 1996).

Arizona tax protester Marvin Cooley writes a best-selling book, The Big Bluff, documenting the struggles of his fellow anti-tax protester, W. Vaughn Ellsworth. Cooley, whose gruff tirades against the IRS and the federal government make him popular on the far-right speaking circuit—in 1971, he wrote to the IRS: “I will no longer pay for the destruction of my country, family, and self. Damn tyranny! Damn the Federal Reserve liars and thieves! Damn all pettifogging, oath-breaking US attorneys and judges.… I will see you all in Hell and shed my blood before I will be robbed of one more dollar to finance a national policy of treason, plunder, and corruption”—includes sample letters and copies of his own tax returns in his book. Among Cooley’s adherents is Robert Jay Mathews, who will go on to found the violent neo-Nazi group The Order (see Late September 1983). In 1970, the 17-year-old Mathews, still living with his parents in Phoenix, becomes a sergeant-at-arms for some of Cooley’s meetings. In 1973, Mathews will use Cooley’s income tax theories to fraudulently list 10 dependents on his W-4 tax form, a common protest tactic that winds up with Mathews convicted of tax fraud (see 1973). Cooley, a vocal proponent of tax protester Arthur Porth (see 1951-1967)‘s “Fifth Amendment Return” strategy (refusing to pay taxes on Fifth Amendment grounds) will go to jail for tax evasion in 1973 and again in 1989. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

Roger Ailes, a former media consultant to the Nixon administration (see Summer 1970) who proposed a White House-run “news network” that would promote Republican-generated propaganda over what he calls “liberal” news reporting (see Summer 1970), moves on to try the idea in the private venue. Ailes works with a project called Television News Incorporated (TVN), a propaganda venue funded by right-wing beer magnate Joseph Coors. Conservative activist and Coors confidant Paul Weyrich will later call Ailes “the godfather behind the scenes” of TVN. To cloak the “news” outlet’s far-right slant, Ailes coins the slogan “Fair and Balanced” for TVN. In 2011, Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson will write: “TVN made no sense as a business. The… news service was designed to inject a far-right slant into local news broadcasts by providing news clips that stations could use without credit—and for a fraction of the true costs of production. Once the affiliates got hooked on the discounted clips, its president explained, TVN would ‘gradually, subtly, slowly’ inject ‘our philosophy in the news.’ The network was, in the words of a news director who quit in protest, a ‘propaganda machine.’” Within weeks of TVN’s inception, its staff of professional journalists eventually has enough of the overt propaganda of their employer and begin defying management orders; Coors and TVN’s top management fire 16 staffers and bring in Ailes to run the operation. The operation is never successful, but during his tenure at TVN, Ailes begins plotting the development of a right-wing news network very similar in concept to the as-yet-unborn Fox News. TVN plans to invest millions in satellite distribution that would allow it not only to distribute news clips to other broadcasters, but to provide a full newscast with its own anchors and crew (a model soon used by CNN). Dickinson will write, “For Ailes, it was a way to extend the kind of fake news that he was regularly using as a political strategist.” Ailes tells a Washington Post reporter in 1972: “I know certain techniques, such as a press release that looks like a newscast. So you use it because you want your man to win.” Ailes contracts with Ford administration officials to produce propaganda for the federal government, providing news clips and scripts to the US Information Agency. Ailes insists that the relationship is not a conflict of interest. Unfortunately for Ailes and Coors, TVN collapses in 1975. One of its biggest problems is the recalcitrance of its journalists, who continue to resist taking part in what they see as propaganda operations. Ailes biographer Kerwin Swint will later say, “They were losing money and they weren’t able to control their journalists.” In a 2011 article for the online news and commentary magazine Gawker, John Cook will write: “Though it died in 1975, TVN was obviously an early trial run for the powerhouse Fox News would become. The ideas were the same—to route Republican-friendly stories around the gatekeepers at the network news divisions.” Dickinson will write that one of the lessons Ailes learns from TVN, and will employ at Fox, is to hire journalists who put ideological committment ahead of journalistic ethics—journalists who will “toe the line.” [Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011; Gawker, 6/30/2011] Ailes will go on to found Fox News, using the “fair and balanced” slogan to great effect (see October 7, 1996 and 1995).

Financial and insurance consultant Irwin Schiff uses the anti-tax arguments of Arthur Porth (see 1951-1967) and Marvin Cooley (see 1970-1972) to bring the anti-tax protest message to a much more mainstream audience than Porth, whose appeal was largely confined to right-wing and racist audiences. Schiff, who bills himself as “America’s leading untax expert,” will appear on national television for more than 25 years before eventually going to jail for tax evasion. His biggest impact comes with his 1976 book, The Biggest Con: How the Government is Fleecing You. His second book, published six years later, is called How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes. The Biggest Con earns him $135,000 in royalties over the two years that follow its publication, and $85,000 in royalties for the decade following. In 1978, Schiff is charged for failing to file tax returns, and eventually convicted; he will be convicted of similar charges in 1985 and again in 2005. He tells one judge: “I only received federal reserve units, not dollars. I received no lawful money upon which a tax can be collected.” The US government says Schiff owes over $2.6 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Tax Protester Dossiers, 10/23/2010] In 1996, Schiff will be a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president. [C-SPAN, 7/5/1996]

Former lawyers Jerome Daly and William Drexler, disbarred for their actions as anti-tax protesters in Minnesota (see December 9, 1968 and After), are sentenced to lengthy prison terms for founding and marketing fake churches (the Basic Bible Church and the Life Science Church) for the purpose of allowing people to avoid paying income taxes. Daly and Drexler are proponents of the popular “Fifth Amendment Return” that features citizens refusing to pay federal income taxes on Fifth Amendment grounds (see 1951-1967) and the idea that Federal Reserve paper notes are not legitimate currency because they cannot be redeemed “in specie”—a citizen cannot go to a bank and redeem a paper note for the note’s value in gold or silver. [Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

KochPAC logo. [Source: KochPAC (.com)]After their stinging loss during the November 1980 presidential campaign, the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, decide that they need to work to inculcate their brand of hard-right libertarianism into the electorate through indirect means (see 1979-1980). Therefore, they begin spending vast amounts of their personal fortunes on what purport to be independent think tanks and other political or ideological organizations. At the same time, the brothers become political recluses, rarely speaking in public and rarely acknowledging the breadth or the direction of their donations. It is hard to know exactly how much the Kochs spend and where they spend it, though public records give some of the picture. Between 1998 and 2008, Charles Koch’s foundation spends over $48 million on political funding. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, controlled by Charles and his wife, spends over $28 million. David Koch’s foundation spends over $120 million. Koch Industries, controlled primarily by Charles, spends over $50 million on lobbying efforts. Their political action committee, KochPAC, donates around $8 million, almost all of it going to Republicans. In 2010, as in other years, Koch Industries leads all other energy companies in political donations. The brothers spend over $2 million of their personal fortunes on political donations, almost all of it going to Republicans. Ari Rabin-Havt of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will say that the Kochs’ effort is unusual in its marshalling of corporate and personal funds: “Their role, in terms of financial commitments, is staggering.” Lee Fang, writing for the liberal blog ThinkProgress (an arm of the Center for American Progress), calls the Kochs “the billionaires behind the hate.” Some believe that the Kochs have either skirted, or outright broken, laws controlling tax-exempt giving. Charitable foundations must conduct exclusively nonpartisan activities that promote the public welfare. But in 2004, a report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, describes the Kochs’ foundations as being self-serving, and concludes, “These foundations give money to nonprofit organizations that do research and advocacy on issues that impact the profit margin of Koch Industries.” The Kochs also use their charitable foundations to fund hard-right political organizations that, according to reporter Jane Mayer, “aim to push the country in a libertarian direction,” including: the Institute for Justice, which files lawsuits opposing state and federal regulations; the Institute for Humane Studies, which underwrites libertarian academics; and the Bill of Rights Institute, which promotes a conservative interpretation of the Constitution. David Koch acknowledges that the family exerts tight ideological control. “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent,” he tells a reporter. “And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.” [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]

An undated photo of LeRoy Schweitzer. [Source: WorldNews]LeRoy Schweitzer, a crop duster in Montana and Idaho, becomes increasingly frustrated and resentful at what he considers interference by the government. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Schweitzer moves toward becoming an anti-government tax resister. He becomes fascinated by the legal ideology of the Posse Comitatus (see 1969), attends numerous Posse meetings, and has some contacts with members of The Order (see Late September 1983). Schweitzer, well-liked by his neighbors and friends, begins to worry them with his increasing extremism. He helps a friend, Bernard Kuennan, mount a legal defense against charges of letting his dog roam unvaccinated, and the two hammer the judge with questions about the differences between “admiralty” and “common law” (see Fall 2010). He defies police officers who stop him for traffic violations. He moves to Montana, where he refuses to get a license to fly his Cessna crop duster, resulting in federal arrest warrants. His refusal to pay federal taxes causes the IRS to seize his plane in November 1992, his Bozeman, Montana home, and other equipment, and sell it all to pay his $389,000 delinquent tax bill, dating back to the 1970s. Thoroughly radicalized, Schweitzer meets Rodney Owen Skurdal, another legal manipulator. Skurdal is an ex-Marine and Posse Comitatus advocate who, during litigation of a worker’s compensation suit in the 1980s, tells the judge that the federal government lacks the authority to print paper money and demands, fruitlessly, to be paid his compensation in gold bullion. One Wyoming newspaper claims that Skurdal’s extremism begins after he suffers a fractured skull in 1983, the source of the compensation claim; Skurdal’s former wife says after the injury that Skurdal refuses to use a Social Security number or driver’s license. Skurdal, like many in the Posse, is an adherent to the virulently racist Christian Identity belief system (see 1960s and After), and in court filings claims non-whites are “beasts,” and Jews “the children of Satan.” Skurdal routinely intertwines Identity, Posse Comitatus, Biblical, and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) tenets in his court filings (see 1994). In 1993, the IRS seizes his farm near Roundup, Montana, for back taxes; Skurdal continues to occupy the farm and no local official dares to evict him. In late 1994, Skurdal invites Schweitzer to move in with him; they are joined by Daniel Petersen in early 1995. The three become the nucleus of what will become the Montana Freemen. Skurdal’s farm becomes a headquarters for the nascent organization, with computers, fax machines, laser printers, and satellite dishes going round the clock. The inhabitants post a sign on the edge of the property, reading: “Do Not Enter Private Land of the Sovereign.… The right of Personal Liberty is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen, and any unlawful interference with it may be resisted.” Local authorities want to curb the group, but do not want to risk violence and bloodshed. Musselshell County Sheriff G. Paul Smith says: “These people want to be martyrs. I don’t know how far they are willing to carry that.” Moreover, Smith and his small sheriff’s department are outnammed and outgunned. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]

The cover of the first volume of ‘The Law that Never Was.’ [Source: Radaris (.com) / Amazon (.com)]Two anti-tax protesters, William “Bill” Benson and Martin J. “Red” Beckman, publish a two-volume book, The Law that Never Was, that argues the 16th Amendment, the constitutional amendment giving the federal government the authority to levy income taxes, is null and void (see 1951-1967, 1970-1972, 1976-1978, and Early 1980s). The arguments in the book include the idea that because the amendment was ratified by different states with small differences in capitalization and punctuation, it was never properly ratified, as well as the argument that since Ohio was not yet a state when it ratified the amendment, Ohio’s ratification of the amendment renders it null. The authors include other arguments—the Internal Revenue Code is not “positive law”; the Internal Revenue Service is not a legitimate government agency; wages do not qualify as “taxable income”; “sovereign citizens” are exempt from income tax—all of which will be declared worthless and frivolous by various state and federal courts. The Anti-Defamation League will write that the arguments advanced by Benson and Beckman “are used again and again by tax protesters.… When a tax protest argument fails in court, the response among tax protesters is typically not to conclude that the argument was erroneous but rather to assume that the judge was wrong, corrupt, or deliberately misinterpreting the law.” Benson is a former investigator for the Illinois Internal Revenue Service, while Beckman is a virulent anti-Semite who accuses Jews of worshiping Satan and says the Holocaust was God’s “judgment upon a people who believe Satan is their god.” In 1991, Benson will be convicted of tax fraud and tax evasion, and will be sued by the US government to stop him from promoting an “abusive tax shelter” by selling what he calls a “Reliance Defense Package” while doing business as “Constitutional Research Associates.” In 2007, a federal court will find that his Reliance Defense Package “contained false or fraudulent information concerning tax advice,” and will note that a circuit court “explicitly rejected Benson’s arguments that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified.” Benson’s work will frequently be cited by tax protesters, many of whom will be fined or convicted for relying on his claims. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Tax Protester Dossiers, 11/30/2009; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

Dan Rather interviews Vice President Bush, watching him on a monitor. Neither Rather nor the CBS viewers can see Bush’s consultant Roger Ailes off-camera. [Source: Media Research Center]Roger Ailes, a former media consultant to the Nixon administration (see Summer 1970), comes up with a bold plan to help his new client, Vice President George H.W. Bush, who is running for president. Bush is neck-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal (see Before July 28, 1986, August 6, 1987, and December 25, 1992) and, as reporter Tim Dickinson will later write, comes across as “effete” in comparison to his predecessor Ronald Reagan. Ailes decides to use an interview with combative CBS News reporter Dan Rather to bolster his client’s image. Ailes insists that the interview be done live, instead of in the usual format of being recorded and then edited for broadcast. Dickinson will later write, “That not only gave the confrontation the air of a prizefight—it enabled Ailes himself to sit just off-camera in Bush’s office, prompting his candidate with cue cards.” Rather is in the CBS studio in New York and has no idea Ailes is coaching Bush. As planned, Bush begins the interview aggressively, falsely accusing Rather of misleading him by focusing the interview on Iran-Contra. (It is true that CBS had not informed the Bush team that it would air a report on the Iran-Contra investigation as a lead-in to the Bush interview, a scheduling that some in the Bush team see as a “bait-and-switch.”) When Rather begins to press Bush, Ailes flashes a cue card: “walked off the air.” This is a set piece that Bush and Ailes have worked out beforehand, based on an embarrassing incident in Rather’s recent past, when Rather angrily walked off the CBS set after learning that his newscast had been pre-empted by a women’s tennis match. Clenching his fist, Ailes mouths at Bush: “Go! Go! Just kick his ass!” Bush fires his rejoinder: “It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set?” In their 1989 book The Acting President: Ronald Reagan and the Supporting Players Who Helped Him Create the Illusion That Held America Spellbound, CBS host Bob Schieffer and co-author Gary Paul Gates will write: “What people in the bureau and viewers at home could not see was that the response had not been entirely spontaneous. As the interview progressed, the crafty Ailes had stationed himself beside the camera. If Bush seemed to be struggling for a response, Ailes would write out a key word in huge letters on his yellow legal pad and hold it just beneath the camera in Bush’s line of vision. Just before Bush had shouted that it was not fair to judge his career on Iran, Ailes had written out on his legal pad the words.… Three times during the interview, Bush’s answer had come after Ailes had prompted him with key words or phrases scribbled on the legal pad.” Dickinson will later write: “It was the mother of all false equivalencies: the fleeting petulance of a news anchor pitted against the high crimes of a sitting vice president. But it worked as TV.” Ailes’s colleague Roger Stone, who worked with Ailes on the 1968 Nixon campaign, will later say of the interview: “That bite of Bush telling Rather off played over and over and over again. It was a perfect example of [Ailes] understanding the news cycle, the dynamics of the situation, and the power of television.” [Associated Press, 7/6/1989; NewsBusters, 1/25/2008; Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011] After the interview is concluded, Bush leaps to his feet and, with the microphone still live, says: “The b_stard didn’t lay a glove on me.… Tell your g_ddamned network that if they want to talk to me to raise their hands at a press conference. No more Mr. Inside stuff after that.” The unexpected aggression from Bush helps solidify his standing with hardline Republicans. The interview gives more “proof” to those same hardliners that the media is hopelessly liberal, “their” candidates cannot expect to be treated fairly, and that the only way for them to “survive” encounters with mainstream media figures is through aggression and intimidation. [Salon, 1/26/2011] Conservative commentator Rich Noyes will write in 2008 that Bush’s jab at Rather exposed the reporter’s “liberal bias,” though he will fail to inform his readers of Ailes’s off-camera coaching. [NewsBusters, 1/25/2008]

The image of Willie Horton as shown in the ‘Weekend Pass’ campaign ad. [Source: University of Virginia]A political advertisement on behalf of the George H. W. Bush presidential campaign appears, running on televisions around the country between September 21 and October 4, 1988. Called “Weekend Pass,” it depicts convicted murderer William “Willie” Horton, who was granted 10 separate furloughs from prison, and used the time from his last furlough to kidnap and rape a young woman. The advertisement and subsequent media barrage falsely accuses Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, of creating the “furlough program” that led to Horton’s release, and paints Dukakis as “soft on crime.” It will come to be known as one of the most overly racist political advertisements in the history of modern US presidential politics. Ad Content - The ad begins by comparing the positions of the two candidates on crime. It notes that Bush supports the death penalty for convicted murderers, whereas Dukakis does not. The ad’s voiceover narrator then states, “Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison,” with the accompanying text “Opposes Death Penalty, Allowed Murderers to Have Weekend Passes” superimposed on a photograph of Dukakis. The narrator then says, “One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times,” accompanied by a mug shot of Horton. The voiceover continues: “Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend.” At this point, the ad shows another picture of Horton being arrested while the accompanying text reads, “Kidnapping, Stabbing, Raping.” The ad’s narration concludes: “Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime.” The ad is credited to the “National Security Political Action Committee.” [Inside Politics (.org), 1999; Museum of the Moving Image, 2008; University of Virginia, Introduction to American Politics, 11/18/2009]'Soft on Crime' - The ad is a reflection of the measures the Bush campaign is willing to undertake to defeat the apparently strong Dukakis candidacy. Dukakis is a popular Democratic governor and widely credited with what pundits call the “Massachusetts Miracle,” reversing the downward economic spiral in his state without resorting to hefty tax increases. At the time of the ad, Dukakis enjoys a 17-point lead over Bush in the polls. Bush campaign strategists, led by campaign manager Lee Atwater, have learned from focus groups that conservative Democratic voters, which some call “Reagan Democrats,” are not solid in their support of Dukakis, and are swayed by reports that he vetoed legislation requiring teachers to say the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day. They also react negatively when they learn that during Dukakis’s tenure as governor, Horton had been furloughed and subsequently raped a white woman. Atwater and the Bush campaign decide that Dukakis can successfully be attacked as a “liberal” who is “not patriotic” and is “soft on crime.” Atwater, who has a strong record of appealing to racism in key voting groups (see 1981), tells Republican Party officials, “By the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name.” Although Dukakis had vetoed a bill mandating the death penalty for first-degree murder in Massachusetts, he did not institute the furlough program; that was signed into law by Republican governor Francis Sargent in 1972. The ads and the accompanying media blitz successfully avoid telling voters that Sargent, not Dukakis, instituted the furlough program. [Regardie's Magazine, 10/1/1990; Inside Politics (.org), 1999]Running the Horton Ad - The ad is sponsored by an ostensibly “independent” political organization, the conservative National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC), headed by former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Thomas Moorer. NSPAC’s daughter organization “Americans for Bush” actually put together the ad, created by marketer Larry McCarthy in close conjunction with Atwater and other Bush campaign aides; Atwater determined months before that the Horton ad should not come directly from the Bush campaign, but from an “independent” group supporting Bush, thus giving the Bush campaign the opportunity to distance itself from the ad, and even criticize it, should voters react negatively towards its message (see June-September 1988). The first version of the ad does not use the menacing mug shot of Horton, which McCarthy later says depicts “every suburban mother’s greatest fear.” McCarthy and Atwater feared that the networks would refuse to run the ad if it appeared controversial. However, the network censors do not object, so McCarthy quickly substitutes a second version of the ad featuring the mug shot. When Democrats and progressive critics of the Bush campaign complain that Bush is running a racist ad, Bush media adviser Roger Ailes says that neither he nor the campaign have any control over what outside groups like “Americans for Bush” put on the airwaves. InsidePolitics will later write, “This gave the Bush camp plausible deniability that helped its candidate avoid public condemnation for racist campaigning.” Accompanying Newspaper Reports, Bush Campaign Ads - The ad airs for the first time on September 21. On September 22, newspapers around the nation begin publishing articles telling the story of Angie and Clifford Barnes, victimized by Horton while on furlouogh. On October 5, the Bush campaign releases a “sister” television ad, called “Revolving Door.” Scripted by Ailes, the commercial does not mention Horton nor does it show the now-infamous mug shot, but emphasizes the contention that Dukakis is “soft on crime” and has what it calls a “lenient” furlough policy for violent convicts. The central image of the ad is a stream of African-American inmates moving slowly in and out of a revolving gate. The voiceover says that Dukakis had vetoed the death penalty and given furloughs to “first-degree murderers not eligible for parole. While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape.” At the same time, Clifford Barnes and the sister of the youth murdered by Horton embark on a nationwide speaking tour funded by a pro-Bush independent group known as the Committee for the Presidency. Barnes also appears on a number of television talk shows, including those hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera. Barnes and the victim’s sister also appear in two “victim” ads, where Barnes says: “Mike Dukakis and Willie Horton changed our lives forever.… We are worried people don’t know enough about Mike Dukakis.” In 1999, InsidePolitics will write that the media gives the “Revolving Door” ad a “courteous reception,” and focuses more on the two ads’ impact on the election, and the Dukakis campaign’s lack of response, instead of discussing the issues of race and crime as portrayed by the ads. It is not until October 24, less than two weeks before the election, that anyone in the mainstream media airs footage of critics questioning whether the ads are racially inflammatory, but these appearances are few and far between, and are always balanced with appearances by Bush supporters praising the campaign’s media strategy. [Inside Politics (.org), 1999; Inside Politics (.org), 1999; University of Virginia, Introduction to American Politics, 11/18/2009]Denials - Bush and his vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle will deny that the ads are racist, and will accuse Democrats of trying to use racism to stir up controversy (see October 1988). Failure to Respond - The Dukakis campaign will make what many political observers later characterize as a major political blunder: it refuses to answer the ads or dispute their content until almost the last days of the campaign, hoping that viewers would instead conclude that the ads are unfair without the Dukakis campaign’s involvement. The ads will be hugely successful in securing the election for Bush (see September-November 1988). [Museum of the Moving Image, 2008]

Unofficial Americans with Disabilities Act logo. [Source: Broward County, Florida]President Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law. The ADA, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s description, “prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. The ADA covers employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations. The ADA’s nondiscrimination standards also apply to federal sector employees… and its implementing rules.” The law requires that election workers and polling sites provide a range of services to ensure that people with disabilities can vote. [US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 9/9/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 2012]

A Web graphic opposing the ‘New World Order.’ [Source: Human Symbiose (.org)]In a speech discussing the post-Cold War world, President Bush outlines his vision of a “New World Order.” Bush says: “We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.” The Southern Poverty Law Center will later write that many people, particularly white supremacists and separatists, take Bush’s phrase “as a slip of the tongue revealing secret plans to create a one-world government.” [Sweet Liberty, 9/11/1990; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001] In 1995, Michigan gun dealer and right-wing activist Frank Kieltyka will describe the “New World Order” to a Buffalo News reporter. According to Kieltyka, the “New World Order” is backed by the US government and led by, among other organizations, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “We’re moving towards the Communists,” Kieltyka will warn. The belief in this “New World Order” will be emphasized in coming years in the militia movements and by right-wing publications such as The Spotlight, an openly racist, anti-government newsletter. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 157-158]

Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, facing multiple counts of lying under oath to Congress about, among other things, his knowledge of the US government’s involvement in the resupply operation to the Nicaraguan Contras (see October 10-15, 1986), his knowledge of the role played by former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez in the resupply (see December 17, 1986), and his knowledge of third-party funding of the Nicaraguan Contras (see November 25, 1986), agrees to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of withholding evidence from Congress. Abrams agrees to the plea after being confronted with reams of evidence about his duplicity by investigators for special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh as well as from testimony elicited during the House-Senate investigation of 1987 (see July 7-10, 1987) and the guilty plea and subsequent testimony of former CIA agent Alan Fiers (see July 17, 1991). Abrams pleads guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress, to unlawfully withholding information from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, and admits lying when he claimed that he knew nothing of former National Security Council official Oliver North’s illegal diversion of government funds to the Contras (see December 6, 1985, April 4, 1986, and November 25-28, 1986). Abrams says that he lied because he believed “that disclosure of Lt. Col. [Oliver] North’s activities in the resupply of the Contras would jeopardize final enactment” of a $100 million appropriation pending in Congress at the time of his testimony, a request that was narrowly defeated (see March 1986). Abrams also admits to soliciting $10 million in aid for the Contras from the Sultan of Brunei (see June 11, 1986). [Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters: Chapter 25: United States v. Elliott Abrams: November 1986, 8/4/1993]

Rodney Skurdal, a leader of the “Montana Freemen” movement (see 1993-1994), files a 20-page treatise with a Montana court that claims the Freemen are the descendents of the true Anglo-Saxon “chosen people,” and that the land occupied by the United States was promised to them by God. Skurdal, who signs the document “the honorable Justice Rodney O. Skurdal,” writes: “In reading the Bible, one must understand that there are ‘two seed lines’ within Genesis. It is the colored people, and the Jews, who are the descendants of Cain… when We move into a new land, We are to kill the inhabitants of all the other races… nor are We to allow the other races to rule over us.” Skurdal writes extensively of the Freemen’s opposition to governmental rule of any sort, justifying it by referencing his interpretation of Biblical teachings: “We, Israel, must obey God only; not man-made laws by our purported Congress and state legislators and/or the United Nations, under the purported ‘new world order’ i.e., ‘Satan’s laws.’” Skurdal adds that taxes, marriage licenses, driver’s licenses, insurance, electrical inspections, and building permits are all instruments of Satan’s law. He writes that the “land of milk and honey” bequeathed by God to whites is actually the territory now considered the United States, and notes, “If we the white race are God’s chosen people… why are we paying taxes on ‘His land.’” Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University professor and expert on radical Christian ideologies, will call Skurdal’s treatise “pure Christian Identity” (see 1960s and After). This theological claim to land, Barkun will say, goes further than a lot of other Identity adherents do. “What’s unusual here is that this isn’t simply a kind of collective granting of a piece of soil by God to his people, but it’s a kind of literal granting of ownership and control: Because we are his people and this is his land, no one can tell us what to do with it,” Barkun will observe. [Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Chicago Tribune, 4/19/1996] Skurdal has come to the notice of Montana legal authorities before. At one point he had legal actions going simultaneously in every one of Montana’s 56 counties. He has succeeded in getting to the Montana Supreme Court three times over traffic tickets. When the state judiciary ruled that Skurdal’s legal filings were frivolous and could not be accepted without being signed by a lawyer, Skurdal merely mailed his writs and documents to out-of-state agencies, which, assuming the documents were misdelivered, returned them to Montana authorities, where they were filed. After four years of dealing with Skurdal’s legal court cases, Musselshell County Attorney Vicki Knudsen quit her job. One of Skurdal’s filings was a “Citizens Declaration of War” which claimed foreign agents were surreptitiously infesting “the country of Montana.” Another accused county officials of attempting to help institute a New World Order (see September 11, 1990). “Once a court accepts one of these asinine Freemen things,” Knudsen later says, “it’s in the system. Everybody named in it becomes involved [and] has to respond. It’s not funny. It’s not romantic. It’s scary.” Knudsen is referring to the threats issued by Skurdal and his fellow Freemen towards herself and other county officials over their filings. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]

An ad for Fox News by the news organization’s parent company, News Corporation. [Source: Huffington Post]Fox News registers the slogan “fair and balanced” as a trademark for its news and opinion broadcasts. In 2008, authors Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella will note that conservative-slanted Fox News (see October 7, 1996 and December 20, 2004) lives up, in a sense, to its promise of “fair and balanced” news and opinion by “simply inviting liberal guests—not by ensuring that their ideas will receive compatible time.” They will note, “The notion of different amounts of access is important, because we know that in highly controlled settings, mere exposure to signs and symbols produces a preference for them.” Fox disproportionately exposes its audience to conservative messages and arguments more than moderate or liberal ones. As a result, the authors observe, “[a]n audience that gravitates primarily to conservative sources whose message is consistent and repetitive is more susceptible to alternate points of view in approximately equal amounts.” The authors will continue, “Fox’s claim that Fox is unbiased because it is ‘fair and balanced’ is made with a wink and a nod.” They will quote conservative editorialist Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal (see January 20, 2003) and conservative financier Richard Viguerie (see July 2004) to bolster their argument. [CBS News, 8/12/2003; Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 49]

The CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center creates a special unit focusing specifically on bin Laden. It is informally called Alec Station. About 10 to 15 individuals are assigned to the unit initially. This grows to about 35 to 40 by 9/11. [US Congress, 9/18/2002] The unit is set up “largely because of evidence linking [bin Laden] to the 1993 bombing of the WTC.” [Washington Post, 10/3/2001] Newsweek will comment after 9/11, “With the Cold War over, the Mafia in retreat, and the drug war unwinnable, the CIA and FBI were eager to have a new foe to fight.… Historical rivals, the spies and G-men were finally learning to work together. But they didn’t necessarily share secrets with the alphabet soup of other enforcement and intelligence agencies, like Customs and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and they remained aloof from the Pentagon. And no amount of good will or money could bridge a fundamental divide between intelligence and law enforcement. Spies prefer to watch and wait; cops want to get their man.” [Newsweek, 10/1/2001] Michael Scheuer will lead the unit until 1999. He will later become a vocal critic of the US government’s efforts to combat terrorism. He later recalls that while bin Laden is mostly thought of merely as a terrorist financier at this time, “we had run across bin Laden in a lot of different places, not personally but in terms of his influence, either through rhetoric, through audiotapes, through passports, through money-he seemed to turn up everywhere. So when we [created the unit], the first responsibility was to find out if he was a threat.” [Vanity Fair, 11/2004] By the start of 1997, the unit will conclude bin Laden is a serious threat (see Early 1997).

Charles Duke. [Source: Crooks and Liars]At the FBI’s request, Colorado Republican State Senator Charles Duke, a respected figure in militia circles, arrives in Jordan, Montana, to negotiate with the besieged Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996). Duke and FBI negotiators spend six days in fruitless negotiations culminating in an argument between Duke and Freemen leader Rodney Skurdal. Duke says only half of those in the compound are real Freemen, with the rest “nothing but criminals trying to escape prosecution.” The Freemen promise to allow Duke and an FBI team to interview everyone in the compound, and to release two young girls among their number, but fail to deliver on either promise. [Chicago Tribune`, 5/24/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] Gloria Ward and her two daughters, aged 8 and 10, appear at one negotiating session with their luggage packed as if readying to leave, but instead of exiting the compound, they go back inside when the talks end. [Reuters, 5/20/1996]Talks End in Angry Shouts; No Support from Militias - Duke is blazingly angry at the Freemen’s refusal to honor their promises. As Skurdal climbs into an automobile to go back to the ranch house, he shouts, “You aren’t enough of a man to come face me, get out of that car!” Afterwards, Duke says: “I told him, ‘I’m going to go out of here and I’m going to tell the American people what you’re doing here. You will not get support from the patriot community, you will not get support from the militia community, and if you die, nobody’s going to avenge you.’” Many in the militia community have similar feelings as Duke’s. Montana Militia leader Randy Trochmann says: “People in contact with them understand now that what they were doing was fraud. With the public, a good percentage of them want the FBI just to leave, put a berm around the house, and let the state police patrol it. And another percentage just want them [the FBI] to go in and finish them off.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/5/1996] Duke adds: “The FBI has now pursued each and every avenue to a peaceful solution. If it should come to a less than peaceful solution, I can tell you for sure the FBI has bent over backwards to avoid it.… One can only conclude the adults inside care only for their safety and care not one whit for the safety of their children, because they’re willing to sacrifice them and use them as a shield (see May 1, 1996). I think it’s unconscionable.” After Duke leaves, the Freemen begin rotating armed foot patrols, something they have not yet done during the duration of the standoff. [Associated Press, 5/21/1996] After leaving the Freemen ranch, Duke says he sees little hope of resolving the standoff by peaceful means. “I realized this is going nowhere,” he says. It is time for the FBI to make the Freemen “feel some pain.” [Chicago Tribune`, 5/24/1996] “This is not a battle for the militias,” Duke later adds. “The Freemen are using the Constitution as a facade to prevent their incarceration for illegal activity.” Militia leader James “Bo” Gritz, who himself attempted to negotiate an end to the standoff (see May 1, 1996), says the standoff is not a cause for any militia groups or their supporters. “There isn’t anyone in the legitimate patriot movement who doesn’t want to see the Freemen out and before the bar of justice,” he says. “The FBI are wrong in their fears.” Gritz is referring to fears that if the FBI moves on the Freemen, the right-wing militia groups will condemn the bureau for its actions, and perhaps launch counterattacks. [New York Times, 5/24/1996]Fear of Cancer, 'No Brains' Drugs - At least one of the Freemen expresses his fear of being injected with cancer cells and “no brains” drugs if he were to go to jail, and several of the Freemen say they are ready to shoot it out with the FBI. The information comes from audiotapes Duke makes of his conversations with the Freemen; he will publicly air some of the tapes on the June 17, 1996 broadcast of Dateline NBC. Freeman Edwin Clark says: “When [LeRoy Schweitzer, the Freeman in federal custody] went to Missouri (see March 30-31, 1996), a man, a doctor from New York City, come in and told Leroy, he says, ‘You’ll never see the light of day.’ And he says, ‘I’ll guarantee you before you leave here I’m gonna inject you with a, with a deadly ah… dose of cancer.” Clark says that government officials have tried to kill other jailed Freemen: “I know of two of them, one of them at least, he was as healthy as a [expletive] horse when he went in there, and he came back… there was another one, I can’t remember his name, they, they give him a lethal dose of ‘no brains’ when he come back.” [Associated Press, 6/17/1996]

Fox News logo. [Source: Fox News]Fox News begins broadcasting on US cable television. Fox News provides 24-hour news programming alongside the nation’s only other such cable news provider, CNN. Fox executive Roger Ailes, a former campaign adviser for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988), envisions Fox News as a conservative “antidote” to what he calls the “liberal bias” of the rest of American news broadcasting. Ailes uses many of the methodologies and characteristics of conservative talk radio, and brings several radio hosts on his channel, including Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, to host television shows. [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 47; New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] Referring to Ailes’s campaign experience, veteran Republican consultant Ed Rollins later says: “Because of his political work, he understood there was an audience. He knew there were a couple million conservatives who were a potential audience, and he built Fox to reach them.” [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011]Ailes Planned for Fox News as Far Back as 1970 - Ailes began envisioning a conservative news provider to counter what he considers the mainstream media’s “liberal bias” as early as 1970, when he became heavily involved with a Nixon administration plan to plant conservative propaganda in news outlets across the nation (see Summer 1970). In 1971, he headed a short-lived private conservative television news network, Television News Incorporated (TVN—see 1971-1975), which foundered in 1975 in part because of its reporters and staffers balking at reporting Ailes-crafted propaganda instead of “straight” news. Ailes told a New York Times reporter in 1991 that he was leaving politics, saying: “I’ve been in politics for 25 years. It’s always been a detour. Now my business has taken a turn back to my entertainment and corporate clients.” But Ailes misinformed the reporter. He continued to work behind the scenes on the 1992 Bush re-election campaign, providing the campaign with attack points against Democratic contender Bill Clinton (D-AR) and earning the nickname “Deep Throat” from Bush aides. Though Ailes did do work in entertainment, helping develop tabloid television programs such as The Maury Povich Show and heading the cable business news network CNBC for three years, Ailes has continued to stay heavily involved in Republican politics ever since. Ailes became involved in the creation of Fox News in early 1996 after he left NBC, which had canceled his show America’s Talking and launched a new cable news network, MSNBC, without asking for Ailes’s involvement. Fox News is owned by News Corporation (sometimes abbreviated NewsCorp), an international media conglomerate owned by conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch. When NBC allowed Ailes to leave, Jack Welch, the chairman of NBC’s parent company General Electric, said, “We’ll rue the day we let Roger and Rupert team up.” Murdoch has already tried and failed to buy CNN, and has already begun work on crafting news programs with hard-right slants, such as a 60 Minutes-like show that, reporter Tim Dickinson will write, “would feature a weekly attack-and-destroy piece targeting a liberal politician or social program.” Dan Cooper, the managing editor of the pre-launch Fox News, later says, “The idea of a masquerade was already around prior to Roger arriving.” Eric Burns, who will work for ten years as a Fox News media critic before leaving the network, will say in 2011: “There’s your answer right there to whether Fox News is a conventional news network or whether it has an agenda. That’s its original sin.” To get Fox News onto millions of cable boxes at once, Murdoch paid hundreds of millions of dollars to cable providers to air his new network. Murdoch biographer Neil Chenoweth will later write: “Murdoch’s offer shocked the industry. He was prepared to shell out half a billion dollars just to buy a news voice.” Dickinson will write, “Even before it took to the air, Fox News was guaranteed access to a mass audience, bought and paid for.” Ailes praised Murdoch’s “nerve,” saying, “This is capitalism and one of the things that made this country great.” [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011; Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011]Using Conservative Talk Radio as Template - In 2003, NBC’s Bob Wright will note that Fox News uses conservative talk radio as a template, saying: “[W]hat Fox did was say, ‘Gee, this is a way for us to distinguish ourselves. We’re going to grab this pent-up anger—shouting—that we’re seeing on talk radio and put it onto television.’” CBS News anchor Dan Rather will be more critical, saying that Fox is a reflection of Murdoch’s own conservative political views. “Mr. Murdoch has a business, a huge worldwide conglomerate business,” Rather says. “He finds it to his benefit to have media outlets, press outlets, that serve his business interests. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a free country. It’s not an indictable offense. But by any clear analysis the bias is towards his own personal, political, partisan agenda… primarily because it fits his commercial interests.” [New Yorker, 5/26/2003]Putting Ideology Over Journalistic Ethics, Practices - Ailes, determined not to let journalists with ethical qualms disrupt Fox News as they had his previous attempt at creating a conservative news network (see 1971-1975), brought a hand-picked selection of reporters and staffers with demonstrable conservative ideologies from NBC, including business anchor Neil Cavuto and Steve Doocy, who hosts the morning talk show “Fox and Friends.” Both Cavuto and Doocy are Ailes loyalists who, Dickinson will say, owe their careers to Ailes. Ailes then tapped Brit Hume, a veteran ABC correspondent and outspoken conservative, to host the main evening news show, and former Bush speechwriter Tony Snow as a commentator and host. John Moody, a forcefully conservative ABC News veteran, heads the newsroom. Ailes then went on a purge of Fox News staffers. Joe Peyronnin, who headed the network before Ailes displaced him, later recalls: “There was a litmus test. He was going to figure out who was liberal or conservative when he came in, and try to get rid of the liberals.” Ailes confronted reporters with suspected “liberal bias” with “gotcha” questions such as “Why are you a liberal?” Staffers with mainstream media experience were forced to defend their employment at such venues as CBS News, which he calls the “Communist Broadcast System.” He fired scores of staffers for perceived liberal leanings and replaced them with fiery young ideologues whose inexperience helps Ailes shape the network to his vision. Before the network aired its first production, Ailes had a seminal meeting with Moody. “One of the problems we have to work on here together when we start this network is that most journalists are liberals,” he told Moody. “And we’ve got to fight that.” Reporters and staffers knew from the outset that Fox, despite its insistence on being “fair and balanced” (see 1995), was going to present news with a conservative slant, and if that did not suit them, they would not be at Fox long. A former Fox News anchor later says: “All outward appearances were that it was just like any other newsroom. But you knew that the way to get ahead was to show your color—and that your color was red.” The anchor refers to “red” as associated with “red state,” commonly used on news broadcasts to define states with Republican majorities. Ailes will always insist that while his network’s talk-show hosts, such as O’Reilly, Hannity, and others, are frankly conservative, Fox’s hard-news shows maintain what he calls a “bright, clear line” that separates conservative cant from reported fact. In practice, this is not the case. Before Fox aired its first broadcast, Ailes tasked Moody to keep the newsroom in line. Early each morning, Ailes has a meeting with Moody, often with Hume on speakerphone from the Washington office, where the day’s agenda is crafted. Moody then sends a memo to the staff telling them how to slant the day’s news coverage according to the agenda of those on “the Second Floor,” as Ailes and his vice presidents are known. A former Fox anchor will later say: “There’s a chain of command, and it’s followed. Roger talks to his people, and his people pass the message on down.” After the 2004 presidential election, Bush press secretary Scott McClellan will admit, “We at the White House were getting them talking points.” Targeting a Niche Demographic - Fox New’s primary viewership defies most demographic wisdom. According to information taken in 2011, it averages 65 years of age (the common “target demographic” for age is the 18-24 bracket), and only 1.38% of its viewers are African-American. Perhaps the most telling statistics are for the Hannity show: 86% describe themselves as pro-business, 84% believe government “does too much,” 78% are “Christian conservatives,” 78% do not support gay rights, 75% are “tea party backers,” 73% support the National Rifle Association, 66% lack college degrees, and 65% are over age 50. A former NewsCorp colleague will say: “He’s got a niche audience and he’s programmed to it beautifully. He feeds them exactly what they want to hear.” Other polls from the same time period consistently show that Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers, and one study shows that Fox News viewers become more misinformed the more they watch the network’s programming. Ailes's Security Concerns Affect Operations, Broadcasting - Ailes is uncomfortable in his office, a second-floor corner suite in the Fox News building at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. His office is too close to the street for his tastes; he believes that gay activists intend to try to harm him, either by attacks from outside the building or through assaults carried out from inside. He also believes that he is a top target for al-Qaeda assassins. Ailes barricades himself behind an enormous mahogany desk, insists on having “bombproof” glass installed in the windows, surrounds himself with heavily-armed bodyguards, and carries a firearm (he has a concealed-carry permit). A monitor on his desk shows him what is transpiring outside his office door; once, when he sees a dark-skinned man wearing what he thought was Muslim garb on the monitor, he will order an immediate lockdown of the entire building, shouting, “This man could be bombing me!” The man will turn out to be a janitor. A source close to Ailes will say, “He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim—which is consistent with the ideology of his network.” A large security detail escorts him daily to and from his Garrison, New Jersey home to his Manhattan offices; in Garrison, his house is surrounded by empty homes Ailes has bought to enhance his personal security. According to sources close to Ailes, Fox News’s slant on gay rights and Islamist extremism is colored by Ailes’s fear and hatred of the groups. 'We Work for Fox' - Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian and Reagan biographer, will say: “Fox News is totalized: It’s an entire network, devoted 24 hours a day to an entire politics, and it’s broadcast as ‘the news.’ That’s why Ailes is a genius. He’s combined opinion and journalism in a wholly new way—one that blurs the distinction between the two.” Dickinson will write: “Fox News stands as the culmination of everything Ailes tried to do for Nixon back in 1968. He has created a vast stage set, designed to resemble an actual news network, that is literally hard-wired into the homes of millions of America’s most conservative voters. GOP candidates then use that forum to communicate directly to their base, bypassing the professional journalists Ailes once denounced as ‘matadors’ who want to ‘tear down the social order’ with their ‘elitist, horse-dung, socialist thinking.’ Ironically, it is Ailes who has built the most formidable propaganda machine ever seen outside of the Communist bloc, pioneering a business model that effectively monetizes conservative politics through its relentless focus on the bottom line.” Former Bush speechwriter David Frum will observe: “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us. Now we’re discovering that we work for Fox.” [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011; Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011]

Entrance to Fort Hood, Texas. [Source: New York Times]Fort Hood, Texas, preparing for the annual “Freedom Fest” Fourth of July celebration, readies itself for a large crowd of local civilians planning to spend the day enjoying fireworks, marathons, concessions, military bands, carnival rides, and community activities. However, anti-government activists Bradley Glover and Michael Dorsett are captured by FBI and Missouri state police officers in Missouri before they can turn the festival into a massacre. Glover and Dorsett have become convinced that the United Nations is housing Communist Chinese troops at the military base, in conjuction with a “New World Order” conspiracy to invade and occupy the United States (see September 11, 1990). Glover, Dorsett, and others—all “splinter” members of an organization calling itself the “Third Continental Congress” (TCC—see Summer 1996 - June 1997)—are planning a multi-pronged attack on the Army base. Soon after, five others are arrested in conjunction with the plot. History of the Fort Hood Plot - Glover and other TCC members believe that the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was a plot by federal agencies to gin up an excuse to persecute “patriot” organizations. Glover told British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing that “it’s only a matter of time now before the shooting war begins.” He believed that the bombing would be followed by heavy-handed anti-terrrorism legislation that would see federal agencies attempt to violently eradicate militia groups, and in turn, those groups would violently resist. “If this thing goes down,” Glover predicted in May 1995, “there’s going to be an extremely large number of US military that’s coming to our side with their weapons. They’ll turn like a dog on a cat.” He believed the militias would easily defeat the government forces—“We can whip those guys. We can take out the so-called ninja wanna-bes. We’ll beat ‘em quick”—but worries that President Clinton will turn to the Chinese forces he supposedly has housed throughout the United States: “That’s what worries us,” Glover said. “Then we’re gonna be fighting big time.” Glover became known to federal authorities after his frequent interviews with reporters after the Oklahoma City bombing, and claims to lead groups such as the Southern Kansas Regional Militia and the First Kansas Mechanized Infantry. (In his “real” life, Glover is a part-time computer consultant.) When the expected crackdown failed to materialize, Glover became a national council member of a national “umbrella” militia group called the Tri-States Militia (see October 1995 and After) and then began associating with ever-more violent anti-government extremists. Glover, Dorsett, and a small group of extremists devise an extensive plan to strike at a number of government facilities and military bases, beginning with Fort Hood. Arrests - But federal and state authorities are well aware of their plans. At 6:15 a.m. on the morning of July 4, FBI agents arrest Glover and Dorsett in their tents in the Colorado Bend State Park. The two have an arsenal with them: two rifles, five pistols, 1600 rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests, a smoke grenade, a homemade silencer, explosive material, a night vision scope, and other items. “Their explosives would have been more damaging to the personnel at Fort Hood than to the physical installation,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Lieutenant Richard Coffey later tells a Texas newspaper reporter. “They did not have the same philosophy as the people in Oklahoma City. They were not looking for a huge explosion to make their point.” Instead, they planned small, repeated explosions. Glover, charged only with weapons violations, posts bail and flees to Wisconsin, where he is quickly arrested again after another weapons charge is added to the original indictment. Dorsett is held on an outstanding federal passport violation. Fellow plotter Merlon “Butch” Lingfelter is later arrested in Wisconsin on July 10, while looking for Glover; he surrenders his two machine guns and two pipe bombs, but says, “I’m not trying to be a noble knight in this, but it’s time somebody somewhere does something.” Despite his defiance, Lingenfelter tells a reporter that the meetings held by Glover were merely social outings. Kevin and Terry Hobeck are arrested on July 10 in Colorado after giving two illegal automatic weapons to undercover police officers; Thomas and Kimberly Newman are arrested on July 11 in Kansas after Thomas Newman gives the same undercover officers a sack full of pipe bombs. Suicide Mission? - One law enforcement official believes that the group may have intended to die in the planned Fort Hood attack. “I think you have to have a warped sense of reality to think you can pull of a mission like that,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain James Keathley later tells a Denver reporter. “It sounds like a suicide mission to me. I don’t know if they could have pulled this off.” [Mark Pitcavage, 1997; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]Sentences - Glover will draw a seven-year prison sentence, and the others lesser terms. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) introduces the so-called “Liberty Amendment” as, his office says in a press release, “what should be 28th Amendment to the US Constitution; HJ116, the Liberty Amendment.” The Liberty Amendment would repeal the 16th Amendment, which gives the federal government the right to levy income, estate, and gift taxes, and would severely limit the power of the federal government in areas not strictly defined by the Constitution, giving vast new powers to the states instead. The Liberty Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1952; in 1957, Representative Elmer Hoffman (R-IL) reintroduced it with the new prohibitions on federal taxations. The Anti-Defamation League will write, “In this form, the amendment garnered considerable support among extreme right-wing conservatives as well as the budding libertarian movement.” Right-wing libertarian Willis Stone became the chairman of the Liberty Amendment Committee in the late 1950s, and for years attempted to raise support for the amendment. In recent years, Paul has become the champion of the amendment. After introducing the amendment, Paul tells reporters: “Over the years this amendment has enjoyed widespread support and has been introduced several times in the past by various members of Congress, but finally this measure has a chance of success given the conservative Congress and mood of the country in favor of a more limited, constitutional government which respects individual liberty.… The income tax is the most regressive tax imaginable, allowing government to take first claim on our lives. The income tax assumes government owns us, as individuals, and has a sovereign claim to the fruits of our labor. This is immoral. But government has been compelled to levy this economically damaging tax because government has grown so big. By reducing the size of the federal government to those functions strictly enumerated in the Constitution, there will no longer be a need for the income tax.… Once again, Americans are being treated to hearings on the abuses of the IRS. For as abusive as the IRS is, it is in fact simply the predictable result of the underlying income tax. By eliminating the income tax, we will go a long way toward eliminating these abuses.” Paul has regularly introduced the amendment in the House since 1981. [Ron Paul, 4/28/1999; Anti-Defamation League, 2011] The Liberty Amendment is part of the anti-tax movement stemming at least as far back as 1951 (see 1951-1967).

The FBI releases its report on what it calls “Project Megiddo,” an examination of what it calls “the potential for extremist criminal activity in the United States by individuals or domestic groups who attach special significance to the year 2000.” The report is released to law enforcement agencies throughout the country, but not to the public. A statement accompanying the report reads in part: “The threat posed by extremists as a result of perceived events associated with the year 2000 (Y2K) is very real. The volatile mix of apocalyptic religious and [New World Order] conspiracy theories (see February 4, 1999) may produce violent acts aimed at precipitating the end of the world as prophesied in the Bible.” The report is based on nine months of intelligence and data collection by the domestic terrorism unit of the FBI. Soon after its release, the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) will obtain a copy and release it on the Internet. The report’s executive summary notes that “Megiddo,” a hill in northern Israel, is the site of a number of Biblical-era battles, and the Hebrew word “armageddon” derives from a Hebrew phrase meaning “hill of Megiddo.” The Bible’s depiction of “Armageddon” is, the report states, “the assembly point in the apocalyptic setting of God’s final and conclusive battle against evil. The name ‘Megiddo’ is an apt title for a project that analyzes those who believe the year 2000 will usher in the end of the world and who are willing to perpetrate acts of violence to bring that end about.” While much of the media-fueled debate about the upcoming “end of the millennium” focuses on technological issues, such as the anticipated widespread disabling of computer networks and the like, the FBI report focuses more specifically on the religious connotations of the time as viewed by far-right “Christian Identity” (see 1960s and After) and related white supremacist, separatist, and militia organizations. The report, the summary states, “is intended to analyze the potential for extremist criminal activity in the United States by individuals or domestic extremist groups who profess an apocalyptic view of the millennium or attach special significance to the year 2000.” It is difficult to say what groups may pose a threat as 1999 comes to a close, the report states, as it is difficult to anticipate which groups will follow through on their rhetoric and which will not. Moreover, the report notes, many domestic extremist groups are not traditionally structured in a hierarchical fashion; the possibility of “lone wolf” strikes by individuals operating outside a militia or extremist group may in some cases outweigh the likelihood of violent assaults carried out by such groups. The report notes that the worst domestic terrorist event in US history, the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), was carried out by two “lone wolves,” Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The report finds few indications of what it calls “specific threats to domestic security,” but focuses more on suspicious activities by a variety of militia groups who are arming themselves, stockpiling food, raising money through illegal means, and other actions which may serve as a warning of future violence. Problems caused by “Y2K glitches” such as power outages and computer failures may be interpreted by some extremist groups as the first actions of a government assault on the citizenry, the FBI warns, and may precipitate violent responses. [Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 10/1999; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/20/1999; Washington Post, 10/31/1999] The right-wing news blog WorldNetDaily will accuse the FBI of issuing the report to “set up” militia groups as patsies for the government’s own terrorist activities (see December 9, 1999).

Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor delivers a lecture at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. Sotomayor, whose parents are Puerto Rican, speaks on the subject of Hispanics in the judiciary and her own experience as a Latina (Hispanic woman) jurist. After noting the tremendous cultural and ethnic diversity among Hispanics, and citing the ascension of increasing numbers of Hispanics and women to the judiciary, Sotomayor addresses the issue of judges acting without regard for their ethnic heritage or gender. “[J]udges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law,” she says, and notes that while she tries to aspire to that goal: “I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address. I accept the thesis… that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought.… I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that—it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.” She adds: “Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.… I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First… there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice [Benjamin] Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I… believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.… However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench.” [National Council of La Raza Law Journal, 10/2001; ABC News, 10/26/2001 ; New York Times, 5/14/2009] After Sotomayor is nominated to the Supreme Court (see May 26, 2009), many critics will use this speech to accuse her of racism (see May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 27, 2009, May 28, 2009, and June 3, 2009).

Robert Bartley. [Source: Slate]The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor emeritus, Robert Bartley, acknowledges that Fox News’s slogan, “We report, you decide,” is a “pretense.” Bartley, a staunch conservative, writes: “Even more importantly, the amazing success of Roger Ailes at Fox News (see October 7, 1996) has provided a meaningful alternative to the Left-establishment slant of the major networks.… His news is no more tilted to the right than theirs has been on the left, and there’s no reason for him to drop his ‘we report, you decide’ pretense until they drop theirs” (see October 13, 2009). [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 49] In May 2003, ABC News president David Westin will say: “I like ‘We report. You decide.’ It’s a wonderful slogan. Too often, I don’t think that’s what’s going on at Fox. Too often, they step over the line and try and help people decide what is right and wrong.” Fox News pundit and host Bill O’Reilly will agree. Asked whether a more accurate tag line for Fox might be “We report. We decide,” he will reply, “Well, you’re probably right.” Todd Gitlin of the Columbia Journalism School will add: “I find it hard to believe many Fox viewers believe Bill O’Reilly is a ‘no-spin zone,’ or ‘We report. You decide.’ It’s a joke. In Washington it reinforces the impression of ‘we happy few who are members of the club.’ It emboldens the right wing to feel justified and confident they can promote their policies.” [New Yorker, 5/26/2003]

The New Yorker reports the results of an Annenberg survey of 673 mainstream news owners, executives, editors, producers, and reporters. Among the survey’s findings is the strong belief that Fox News (see 1995, October 7, 1996, and October 13, 2009)) has had a strong influence on the way broadcasters cover the news, as well as how others present the news on network and cable television programs. In 2002, when the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, was asked how he wanted to improve his own cable news network, MSNBC, he said: “I think the standard right now is Fox. And I want to be as interesting and as edgy as you guys are.” [New Yorker, 5/26/2003; Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 52]

Richard Viguerie. [Source: PBS]Conservative marketing expert Richard Viguerie, writing with David Franke in America’s Right Turn, notes: “Conservatives will almost always defend Fox [News]‘s claim to be ‘fair and balanced,’ but they find it hard to do so without a smirk or smile on their face.… They proudly want to claim Fox as one if their own—it’s one of the movement’s great success stories” (see October 13, 2009). [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 49]

Alex Ben Lock of Television Week writes: “We have seen in the past year the rise of the Fox News Channel, founded only in 1996 (see October 7, 1996), as one of the most important news media of our culture.… Fox has engaged an even larger audience that is amazingly loyal to the FNC brand.… Fox News, in combination with a network of conservative talk radio commentators, has changed the way many Americans process news—despite or maybe because of the adamant opposition of numerous intellectuals, journalists, celebrities, and others who still can’t believe what has happened” (see October 13, 2009). [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 48]

Cover of ‘The Shadow Party.’ [Source: Brazos Bookstore]Authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe publish a book titled The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, that purports to prove Jewish billionaire George Soros, who finances progressive and Democratic Party causes, is in reality a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite. However, the book is riddled with doctored quotes, misinformation, factual errors, and outright lies. Progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes that the book relies on long-discredited accusations from the authors’ “Front Page Magazine” Web site, from their articles on conservative Web publications such as WorldNetDaily and NewsMax, and on unsourced allegations from political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, who have called Soros a “Nazi beast-man” and a “small cog in Adolf Eichmann’s killing machine,” aiding “the Holocaust against 500,000 Hungarian Jews.” Media Matters calls the book “a new low in the long-running Republican Party and conservative movement campaign of scurrilous personal attacks against Soros, a major supporter of progressive causes in the US and abroad.” The organization also notes that the Web sites used in the book’s research are largely funded by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, and Scaife-owned newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review have promoted the book. Media Matters documents numerous issues of doctored quotes and falsified claims in the book. [Media Matters, 8/2/2006]

Martin Peretz, the editor in chief of The New Republic, falsely accuses Jewish billionaire George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator. Soros is now a target of conservative opprobrium for his financial support of Democratic and progressive causes. As a 14-year-old boy, Soros escaped from the Nazis by hiding with a non-Jewish family in Hungary; the father of that family sometimes served deportation notices to Hungarian Jews. Peretz now calls Soros “a young cog in the Hitlerite wheel.” The progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes that Peretz is following the lead of right-wing extremists David Horowitz and Richard Poe, whose book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party claimed that Soros “survived [the Holocaust] by assimilating to Nazism.” The book was found to be riddled with doctored quotes and factual errors (see August 8, 2006). Peretz uses a transcript of a 1998 interview Soros gave to 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft to prove his claim, but edits the transcript to leave out a key section that shows Soros did not collaborate with Nazis. [Media Matters, 2/5/2007; New Republic, 2/12/2007] (The article is dated February 12, 2007, but was posted on the New Republic Web site a week earlier.)

An anonymous chain email circulating through the Internet falsely claims that presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) “was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, calls the accusation intended to promote a “Manchurian Candidate-style conspiracy theory” about Obama’s birth, his religion, and his citizenship. The email accurately notes that Obama’s father was African and born a Muslim (see January 11, 2008). Obama’s stepfather was Indonesian and raised as a Muslim. However, PolitiFact notes, both men were not religiously observant (Obama has described his father as a practicing atheist). Obama’s American mother was agnostic at best. Obama has said that he grew up with virtually no religious traditions. He has been a practicing Christian for decades (see January 6-11, 2008). “Madrassa” is an Arabic word for “school,” but Americans generally understand the word to mean a school where anti-Western Islamic ideology is taught. The email falsely claims that Obama attended a “madrassa” that engaged in a “RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.” PolitiFact notes: “Westerners typically understand Wahabism to be an austere form of Islam based on a literal reading of the Koran. So is that the type of school Obama attended?” Obama attended a secular public school in Indonesia; a press investigation found the school to be “so progressive that teachers wore miniskirts and all students were encouraged to celebrate Christmas.” The school has never taught Wahabism or any other form of “fringe” Islam. News reports accurately indicate that Obama’s school registration form lists Obama’s religion as “Muslim,” but the form has several other errors, and, PolitiFact notes, “it seems reasonable to assume that he was registered as Muslim simply because his stepfather was Muslim.” Obama also attended a Catholic school in Indonesia for several years. PolitiFact concludes that the email is “a wholesale invention designed to frighten voters.” [St. Petersburg Times, 10/1/2007]

On Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor, Christian activist and Republican strategist Christine O’Donnell says that scientists have succeeded in grafting functioning human brains onto mice. O’Donnell and medical researcher Dr. William Morrone are guests of host Bill O’Reilly, who discusses conservatives’ opposition to stem cell research. O’Reilly begins by noting that researchers in Oregon have succeeded in cloning monkey embryos, which he describes as the first step towards cloning human embryos for the harvesting of stem cells. Morrone favors cloning research because of “the pathology and… the pain” that people suffering from multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other ailments are forced to endure. Morrone is not in favor of cloning human embryos, but he is optimistic that cloning research might lead to new ways to harvest stem cells without destroying existing embryos. O’Donnell has a different view: she says that the Oregon researchers “proudly stated” their intention to clone human beings, and says that human cloning is the real, secretive goal of all such research. O’Reilly then states that human cloning is possible now: “They can clone humans now if they wanted to.… Everybody knows that scientists have enough knowledge to clone a human being if they wanted to,” a statement to which O’Donnell agrees. She then adds: “They are—they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.” Morrone interjects, “That’s an exaggeration,” but his objections are overridden by O’Reilly asking him: “[D]o you understand her concern that there are people who are unethical who will do this kind of stuff for whatever reason? Do you understand her concern?” He gives O’Donnell the last word in his segment, and she concludes: “[I]t is inevitable. This really is about human cloning, about dignity versus commodity. And we already answered that question.” [Fox News, 11/15/2007] O’Donnell’s assertions will receive little attention until almost three years later, when she wins the Republican primary for the US Senate in Delaware (see September 13, 2010) and the media begins recounting some of her less mainstream political and scientific views. That recounting will speculate that O’Donnell may be misremembering a 2005 report of scientists successfully growing human brain cells within mice; reporter Eric Kleefeld will write that it “is not the same as an actual functioning human brain, but a demonstration that human brain cells can be made from stem cells.” [TPMDC, 9/16/2007]

An anonymous chain email circulates throughout the Internet claiming that newly elected President Barack Obama took the oath of office for his former position as a US senator on a Koran, the holy book of Islam, and not a Christian Bible. Obama is a Christian (see January 6-11, 2008), though many of his opponents have insisted that he is a “covert Muslim” or Islamist radical (see April 18, 2008). The email misspells the name as “Kuran,” though it is either spelled Koran or Qu’ran. Two press reports from January 2005 confirm that when Obama was sworn into office as the junior senator from Illinois, he took the oath on his family Bible. The Obama presidential campaign has confirmed that Obama used his family Bible. Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as president of the Senate, administered the oath. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, concludes: “We suspect this false claim was inspired by the 2007 swearing-in of Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), an American convert to Islam and the first Muslim elected to Congress. Ellison used a Koran that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, borrowing the rare book from the Library of Congress. It goes without saying that Ellison is not Obama. And with its intent to inflame, we find the email’s allegation not only false, but pants-on-fire wrong.” [St. Petersburg Times, 12/19/2007]

PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, debunks Internet claims that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, is a covert Muslim whose middle name is Mohammed. The claims appear to be sourced from anonymous emails circulating throughout right-wing blogs and organizations. PolitiFact writes: “First off, Barack Obama’s middle name is not Mohammed; it’s Hussein. He was named after his father, a Kenyan who came to the United States from Africa as a student.” PolitiFact also verifies that Obama is not a Muslim, “covert” or otherwise. Obama is a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (see January 6-11, 2008). PolitiFact notes that the emails contradict themselves, on the one hand making the claim that Obama is a Muslim and on the other attacking his membership in Trinity United. Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs has said, “To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.” [St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008] PolitiFact does further investigation and again debunks the claims months later (see April 18, 2008). PolitiFact has already debunked earlier claims that in 2005, Obama took his Senate oath of office on a Koran, when in reality he used his family Bible (see December 19, 2007).

Reporters show that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a leading Democratic presidential candidate, was never educated in a “madrassa,” or Islamic school, as some of his political enemies claim. Insight Magazine, a subsidiary of the conservative Washington Times, recently reported that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had unearthed information showing that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa during his childhood. The Clinton campaign disputes that it is the source of the story, and calls it “an obvious right-wing hit job.” Obama indeed lived in Indonesia from 1967 through 1971, with his mother and stepfather, but was not educated in a madrassa. Instead, Obama, who was six when his family moved to Indonesia, attended the Basuki School from 1969 through 1971. According to a school official: “This is a public school. We don’t focus on religion.” CNN correspondent John Vause, who visited the school, reports: “I came here to Barack Obama’s elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa… like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.… I’ve been to those madrassas in Pakistan… this school is nothing like that.” A former classmate of Obama’s says the school was not radical in 1969: “It’s not [an] Islamic school. It’s general.… There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian.… So that’s a mixed school.” Associated Press reporters also visit two other schools attended by Obama, the SDN Menteng 1 and Fransiskus Assisi. SDN Menteng 1 is a secular public school, according to its vice principal, while Fransiskus Assisi is, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs, “clearly a Catholic school.” After the Insight story is repeated on Fox News, the Obama campaign calls those broadcasts “appallingly irresponsible.” [CNN, 1/22/2008; Associated Press, 1/24/2008] Despite the debunking, some conservative radio hosts continue to assert that Obama is a Muslim (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, April 3, 2008, July 10, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, August 21, 2008, and September 10, 2008).

Michael Savage. [Source: Portland Indymedia]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic presidential primary race, now between African-American Barack Obama and female Hillary Clinton, “the first affirmative-action election in American history.” Savage says: “We have a woman and a multi-ethnic man running for office on the Democrat side. Is this not akin to an affirmative action election? Isn’t that why the libs are hysterical, tripping over themselves to say amen and yes to this affirmative election vote?” Because Americans do not support affirmative action, Savage asserts, voters will reject either Democratic candidate in the November presidential elections. “When they are heard from, the affirmative action ticket goes down in flames… I don’t really care who’s gonna be on the other side, they win. America’s not ready for an affirmative action presidency. I stand by those words.” Savage goes on to characterize Democratic supporters as “radical red-diaper doper babies from Brooklyn who made a fortune in the film business by urinating on the American flag and decimating the American value, the values that you grew up loving. They [are t]he ones who made a fortune hating America.” [Media Matters, 2/4/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, syndicated conservative radio host Michael Savage, continuing the well-debunked assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008), says that American voters “have a right to know if he’s a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings.” The media should not worry about Republican candidate John McCain’s connections to lobbyists, Savage says, and instead should be more concerned with “the Muslim connection to Obama.” Savage says: “Barack Hussein Obama. Father Muslim, grandfather Muslim. Nothing wrong with that. But we, the American people, being at war with radical Islam have a—have a need to know just exactly what kind of Muslim he was exposed to, what kind of Muslim he is, what kind of Muslim teachings he’s—he’s friendly to. We have a right to know if he’s a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings.” [Media Matters, 2/22/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage says of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, “I think he was hand-picked by some very powerful forces both within and outside the United State of America to drag this country into a hell that it has not seen since the Civil War of the middle of the 19th century.” Savage is referring to controversial statements made by Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whom Savage calls “the soul of Barack Obama’s movement.” Savage goes on to claim that Wright, and by extension Obama, align themselves with historical enemies of the United States: “And if you want a man who says not ‘God bless America,’ but ‘God d_mn America,’ if you want a man who takes the side of the imperial Japanese army, an army that killed not only hundreds of thousands in the Bataan Death March, but hundreds of thousand of Koreans, an army that operated on people while they were alive in Manchuria, a man who takes the side, in essence, of the Japanese Nazis of World War II, if you want a man who takes the side, in essence, of the Hitlers of the world, then you’ve got it in Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, of the Trinity United Church of Christ.” Obama is merely “an ordinary apparatchik of the Democrat machine in Chicago” whose handlers intend to use Obama to bring upheaval and chaos to the nation. [Media Matters, 3/19/2008]

A recent spate of chain email attacks on presidential contender Barack Obama (D-IL) include claims that Obama may be the Antichrist of Biblical prediction. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, notes that the email entirely distorts the words of the Book of Revelation to make its claim. The email reads: “According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.… the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything is it OBAMA??… I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet… do it! If you think I am crazy… Im sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the ‘unknown’ candidate.” PolitiFact notes that there are at least 635,000 hits on Google for the search term “Obama + Antichrist,” indicating that the subject has a certain interest to many. There are also literally thousands of blog posts about “Barack Obama the Antichrist” and such. PolitiFact states flatly, “Nothing about this detailed allegation is true.” According to PolitiFact’s research, which includes interviews with two religious scholars, the email makes a number of egregious errors. The email misstates the name of the “Book of Revelation” as “Revelations.” The email falsely says that the Book of Revelation uses the term “anti-christ” or any such term. Religious studies professor Dr. James D. Tabor tells PolitiFact: “The word Antichrist is not used in the Book of Revelation so this is important to point out. Everybody thinks the word is used.” Dr. L. Michael White, a professor of classics and religious studies, adds, “First and foremost, the word Antichrist and a figure called the Antichrist never occurs in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.” There are characters in Revelation that some interpret as being the Antichrist, particularly one beastly figure in Chapter 13 “having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy” that some consider to be an allusion to the Antichrist. “It’s only in Chapter 13 and you could almost miss it,” Tabor says. White notes that most Biblical scholars do not consider that figure to represent the Antichrist. “It wasn’t there in the Bible,” he says. “It emerges in the Middle Ages. It’s something historians deal with.” The term does appear a few times in other books of the Bible, specifically First John and Second John. The Bible does not identify the Antichrist as a man of any particular age. Nowhere does it describe “a man, in his 40s,” as the e-mail alleges. “As you notice, there’s nothing about being age 40,” Tabor says. “This is completely wrong. The Book of Revelation doesn’t say that. It says it’s a male, so I guess they got that right. It says ‘he,’ ‘he,’ ‘he.’” The Bible does not identify the Antichrist as being Muslim; Islam was not founded as a religion until 400 years after the completion of the various books of the Bible. “A Muslim would be a monotheist and the last thing a Muslim would do is have anyone worship anyone other than God,” says Tabor. And Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, and January 11, 2008). According to White, the email lifts much of its information from the Left Behind series, a group of post-apocalyptic novels written by Christian-right preacher Tim LaHaye and his co-author, Jerry Jenkins. The email is, White says, “a jigsaw puzzle of bits and pieces all filtered through the kind of end-of-world scenarios we get in the theology that is the underpinning of the Left Behind novels.” He says this kind of “patchwork interpretation of the Bible” is used by groups who wish to justify certain beliefs. “Of course, they never bothered to read the Scriptures carefully,” he says, “so it’s kind of a system of interpretation. That if you start with that presupposition… it’s all there you can just find it.… That description [in the chain email] never occurs anywhere in one place nor are the component parts really about the same situation. It’s a cherry-picking through Scripture to get it all to fit together.” PolitiFact calls the email’s claim “egregiously inaccurate.” [St. Petersburg Times, 3/19/2008]

John Kasich, stumping for governor in 2010. [Source: CleveScene (.com)]Fox News contributor John Kasich (R-OH), a former US representative and a current managing partner of the financial firm Lehman Brothers, announces that he intends to challenge Governor Ted Strickland (D-OH) in the 2010 midterm elections. Basic journalist ethics require Fox News to terminate its contract with Kasich and treat him as a candidate for office in future broadcasts. Instead, Kasich remains a Fox News employee until June 1, 2009, when he formally launches his bid for governor of Ohio. He regularly promotes his candidacy on Fox broadcasts, most often on the highly rated O’Reilly Factor, where he is a frequent guest and sometime guest host. Fox News commentators frequently laud Kasich; on June 17, 2008, Republican political analyst and paid Fox contributor Frank Luntz says he is “hoping that Kasich runs for governor of Ohio. I think John would be an outstanding candidate.” On July 15, 2008, talk show host Sean Hannity tells Kasich: “I’m advocating that you run for governor one day. And you’re not.… You’re not going along at all.” Kasich will continue to appear as a regular guest on Fox News programming after he formally launches his bid and Fox terminates its contract with him. He will make frequent appearances on Hannity’s show, where Hannity calls him “governor” and “soon-to-be governor,” and holds a fundraiser for Kasich in October 2009. On The O’Reilly Factor, Fox will show the URL for Kasich’s campaign Web site. On July 8, 2009, Hannity will tell Kasich on air: “You do me a favor. Go get elected governor, although why you would ever want that job, you’re out of your mind, but good luck. And I’m supporting you in the effort.” Kasich will also receive two $10,000 contributions from News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News. [Columbus Dispatch, 3/27/2008; Media Matters, 9/24/2010] Kasich will narrowly defeat Strickland in the 2010 gubernatorial elections. [Associated Press, 11/3/2010] After two months in office, his draconian budget cuts, insults to law enforcement officials and minorities, and heavy-handed attacks on unions will send his popularity plummeting and in April 2011 will spark a recall effort. [Think Progress, 4/11/2011]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage repeats the false assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, a trope repeated by many conservative radio hosts (see January 22-24, 2008). In reality, Obama is a practicing Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ. The allegations that Obama is, or ever was, a Muslim have been debunked by, among others, CNN, the Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press. Savage again lies to his listeners by telling them another oft-repeated falsehood, that Obama was educated in a radical Islamist “madrassah” during a childhood stint in Indonesia. Savage tells his listeners: “Look who we inherited in this country, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Hussein Obama, in one generation. A war hero to—a war hero who commanded the Allied operations against Nazi Germany was running for the presidency then. Now we have an unknown stealth candidate who went to a madrassas in Indonesia and, in fact, was a Muslim.… Yes, check it out.” [Media Matters, 4/7/2008] Weeks before, Savage told his listeners that Obama and his former pastor supported the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, and Obama would bring chaos and devastation to the United States on a scale not seen since the Civil War (see March 13, 2008).

A portion of Barack Obama’s marriage certificate. The full-size original can be viewed online. [Source: St. Petersburg Times]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, debunks a recent spate of claims that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, has ties to Islamist radicals in Kenya. The claims appear to be sourced from a letter sent by American missionaries in Kenya, saying that Obama has ties to a Kenyan opposition party and warning its readers “not to be taken in by those that are promoting him.” The email also claims: “By the way. His true name is Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama. Won’t that sound sweet to our enemies as they swear him in on the Koran! God bless you.” PolitiFact writes: “The e-mail reads like a bad game of ‘telephone,’ its claims drawn from assorted people and sources that have been stitched together. And yet, because it is signed by real people, who have a life in Africa, it somehow carries more credence than your average blog posting—and it’s spreading rapidly.” PolitiFact has debunked this claim before (see January 11, 2008), but notes that the claim continues to spread. PolitiFact posts a copy of Obama’s 1992 marriage certificate, which states “Barack H. Obama” married “Michelle L. Robinson” on October 3, 1992, in a ceremony officiated by Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Jeremiah A. Wright (see January 6-11, 2008). Obama’s driver’s license record in Illinois identifies him as “Barack H. Obama.” His property listings name him as either “Barack Hussein Obama” or “Barack H. Obama.” His registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois notes that Obama was admitted to the Illinois bar on December 17, 1991, and has no public record of discipline. PolitiFact was unable to secure a copy of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). PolitiFact has located the originator of the email, Celeste Davis. Her husband Loren Davis confirms that he cannot substantiate the claims in the email. “That was what we heard there [in Kenya],” Davis tells a PolitiFact interviewer. Davis says he and his wife have lived and worked in Kenya for the past 12 years, and says his wife’s message was from a personal letter “never intended to be forwarded or sent out to the Web.” [St. Petersburg Times, 4/18/2008]

Angela McGlowan. [Source: Women of the GOP]Fox News political analyst Angela McGlowan announces on the air that she is going back to Mississippi to “beat” US Representative Travis W. Childers (D-MS). Appearing on America’s Election Headquarters, she tells fellow contributor Bob Beckel: “That’s all right, sweetie, that’s my district, and I’m going there soon to beat your Democrat colleague, honey. I’m going soon. 2010 is my year. Announcing it right here.” Ethically, Fox should immediately terminate its contract with McGlowan, as she is now an announced candidate for public office. It is improper for Fox or any other journalistic outlet to continue having McGlowan on the air as a paid analyst or commentator once she announces for public office. Instead, Fox continues to pay McGlowan to appear on its programming until her contract expires in February 2010 and she “officially” announces her candidacy in Mississippi. Between May 2008 and February 2010, McGlowan makes dozens of appearances on Fox News and Fox Business Channel, where she regularly touts her candidacy and speaks as a candidate; on January 15, 2010, appearing on Fox Business with Neil Cavuto, she says she has held “four health care town hall meetings in the state of Mississippi” and adds: “[A] lot of people don’t want this health care bill. They want health care reform but they want the right type of reform.” During a February 6 appearance on America’s News Headquarters, McGlowan, still a paid contributor, actively solicits tea party votes and explains, “What I’m doing in essence is I’m concerned about Mississippi and the issues.” Even after she announces her candidacy and “terminates” her contract with Fox, she will continue to appear on its broadcasts as a candidate, including appearances on America’s Newsroom and Hannity; the first line of her first campaign release will reference her former Fox News employment. She receives a late endorsement from Fox News paid contributor Sarah Palin (R-AK). [Media Matters, 2/9/2010; Media Matters, 9/24/2010] On May 27, 2010, McGlowan will appear on America’s Newsroom, where host Bill Hemmer will introduce her as a “Fox News contributor” and ask her opinion of the Gulf of Mexico oil crisis. While she will criticize the Obama administration over it, calling it “Obama’s Katrina” and “Obama’s Watergate,” a chyron will identify McGlowan as a Congressional candidate. At the end of the segment, Hemmer will say, “Angela, I know you’re running for Congress in Mississippi, in the interest of full disclosure, we mention that, and thank you for coming on today.” [Media Matters, 5/27/2010] On June 1, 2010, McGlowan will come in a distant third in the Mississippi Republican primary, and will endorse Republican candidate Alan Nunnelee against Childers. She had previously refused to endorse Nunnelee after her loss, calling him a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and warning that he “would run amok in Washington, DC, the same as any other incumbent politician.” [TPMDC, 6/11/2010] McGlowan will return to work as a Fox News and Fox Business analyst, and will serve as CEO of the lobbying firm Political Strategies and Insights (PSI). [BuzzTab, 4/7/2010]

Conservative radio host Michael Savage says that homeless Americans should be put in “work camps.” As documented by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Savage, answering a caller’s question about how he would address the “problem with the homelessness in this country,” says: “Why not put them in work camps? Most of them are able-bodied.” When the caller asks, “How much do you plan on paying them in these work camps, sir?” Savage responds, “Well, since they’re already receiving public assistance, I’d pay them nothing.” He continues: “Why do you have to pay a man who’s right now living off the fat of the land? And he’s sucking the fat of the land for, you know, a fairly small check—it is true—but he is a leech. He is not a productive member of society. Where is the money supposed to come from? No, I’ve studied the homeless problem for many years, Ed, because I live in one of the most infested cities in the United States—San Francisco—and I’ve observed the bums for many years. And the good—the largest portion of them are able-bodied. They’re drug addicts or alcoholics. There’s no reason they could not be put into work camps and do much of the labor that our illegal aliens are doing. Now, who do you think did this labor in previous generations? It was ne’er-do-wells, who today are basically able to live on the fat of the land and then drink or use drugs because they’re getting a check for nothing. In the old days, they’d pick the crops and they would spend their money on alcohol.” [Media Matters, 6/9/2008]

Obama’s birth certificate, obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: FightTheSmears (.com)]Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), running for the Democratic nomination for president, releases a digitally scanned copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. His campaign is responding to persistent rumors that he is not a legitimate American citizen. In the process of releasing the certificate, Obama’s campaign also launches a Web site called Fight The Smears, devoted to debunking the allegations that, among other things, Obama is not a citizen, he is a closet Muslim, he took his oaths for political office on a copy of the Koran, he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and other falsehoods. As Obama was born in Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, his birth certificate comes under Hawaiian state law, and those laws state birth certificates are not public records. Only the individuals, or immediate family members, may request copies. The copy of the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign confirms that his name is legitimately “Barack Hussein Obama,” not “Barack Muhammed Obama,” “Barry Soetoro,” or other claimed variants, and states that Obama’s mother is Stanley Ann Dunham, an American, and his father is Barack Hussein Obama, an “African.” The birth certificate release only inflames the “birther” claims that Obama is hiding his true citizenship, religion, political alliances, and other such personal facts (see June 27, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009; Honolulu Advertiser, 7/28/2009]

Logo for the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: Baby Guard Fence (.com)]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, publishes a scathing denunciation of so-called “birther” claims that presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is not a legitimate American citizen. The story has gained traction mostly through Internet blogs and emails circulating among far-right and “tea party” organizations and figures, making wildly varying claims—Obama is a Kenyan, he is a Muslim, his middle name is Mohammed, his birth name is “Barry Soetoro,” and so forth. PolitiFact’s Amy Hollyfield writes: “At full throttle, the accusations are explosive and unrelenting, the writers emboldened by the anonymity and reach of the Internet. And you can’t help but ask: How do you prove something to people who come to the facts believing, out of fear or hatred or maybe just partisanship, that they’re being tricked?” Hollyfield notes that PolitiFact has sought a valid copy of Obama’s birth certificate since the claims began circulating months ago. PolitiFact has already secured a copy of Obama’s 1992 marriage certificate from the Cook County, Illinois, Bureau of Vital Statistics, his driver’s license record from the Illinois secretary of state’s office, his registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and all of his property records. The records are consistent, all naming him as either “Barack H. Obama” or “Barack Hussein Obama,” his legitimate, given name. PolitiFact ran into trouble with the birth certificate. Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and according to Hawaiian law, that state’s birth certificates are not public record. Only family members can request copies. The Obama presidential campaign originally declined to provide PolitiFact with a copy, until the campaign released a true copy of the certificate (see June 13, 2008). When PolitiFact received the document, researchers emailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. Spokesman Janice Okubo responded, “It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate.” Instead of settling the controversy, the certificate inflamed the so-called “birthers,” who asked a number of questions concerning the certificate, including queries about and challenges to: the certificate’s seal and registrar’s signature; the color of the document as compared to other Hawaiian birth certificates; the date stamp of June 2007, which some say is “bleeding through the back of the document,” supposedly calling into question the validity of the stamp and, thusly, the entire certificate; the lack of creases from being folded and mailed; the authenticity of the document, which some claim is “clearly Photoshopped and a wholesale fraud.” Further investigation by PolitiFact researchers supports the validity of the certificate and disproves the allegations as cited. Hollyfield writes: “And soon enough, after going to every length possible to confirm the birth certificate’s authenticity, you start asking, what is reasonable here? Because if this document is forged, then they all are. If this document is forged, a US senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois secretary of state’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and many other government agencies.” Hollyfield notes that the Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen email inquiries a day about Obama’s birth certificate, according to Okubo. She tells Hollyfield: “I guess the big issue that’s being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature.” On a Hawaiian birth certificate, she says, the seal and signatures are on the back of the document. “Because they scanned the front… you wouldn’t see those things.” Hollyfield concludes that it is conceivable “that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible.” But she goes on to ask doubters “to look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over. There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact’s conclusion that the candidate’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn’t authentic. And that’s true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.” [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008]

A birth announcement from the August 13, 1961 Honululu Advertiser announcing the birth of a baby boy to the parents of Barack Obama. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]A blogger who supports Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for president over Democratic primary challenger Barack Obama (D-IL) finds a birth announcement from a copy of the August 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser announcing Obama’s birth. The blogger publishes a scanned graphic of the announcement on his blog, and concludes that Obama was “likely” born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu as the campaign, and the senator, have always claimed (see June 13, 2008). Reprinting the annoucement, FactCheck (.org) notes: “Of course, it’s distantly possible that Obama’s grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his US citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the USA.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008] Reporter Will Hoover for the Honolulu Advertiser notes that both the Advertiser and the Honolulu Star Bulletin published birth announcements for Obama. One of the announcements, the blogger notes, contains the actual address of Obama’s parents at the time they lived in Honolulu, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway. Newspaper officials tell Hoover that the announcements came, not from the parents, but from Hawaii’s Department of Health. “That’s not the kind of stuff a family member calls in and says, ‘Hey, can you put this in?’” Hoover explains. [What Really Happened (.com), 2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009]

One of the digital artifacts scanned from Barack Obama’s birth certificate and digitally manipulated by ‘Techdude.’ [Source: Dr. Neal Krawetz]A blogger calling himself “Techdude” writes a “final report” for the conservative blog Atlas Shrugs that, he claims, proves Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s digitally scanned copy of his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) is a fraud, regardless of the recent validation of the copy by PolitiFact (see June 27, 2008) and the discovery of a printed birth announcement from a Honolulu newspaper (see July 2008). The proprietor of Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller, refuses to name “Techdude,” but claims “he is an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American College of Forensic Examiners, the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, International Information Systems Forensics Association,” and other unnamed organizations. He is, Geller claims, a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. “Techdude“‘s report begins with complaints that unnamed Obama supporters have recently vandalized his car and hung a dead rabbit on his front door “in a lame attempt to intimidate me from proceeding with releasing any details of my analysis.” The attempt at “intimidation” did not work, “Techdude” proclaims, and he then releases his detailed analysis of the certificate. Although he refuses to release any information about the supposed actual Hawaiian birth certificates he used for his comparisons, “because of the amazing number of violent psychopaths who seem to be drawn to this issue,” he says comparison between the digital scan of Obama’s certificate and the “actual” certificates he claims to have in his possession show critical differences between them. “Techdude” says, among other things: The borders of the real certificates differ from those on the Obama certificate; The measurements of the real certificates differ from those of the Obama certificate; The digital scan shows evidence that the information was “overlain” onto a piece of security paper; The digital scan shows artifacts that could only come from Photoshop manipulation; The typography shows differences in “kerning,” or the spacing between characters, between the scan and the authentic documents. “Techdude” concludes that the digital scan was produced by someone obtaining a real Hawaii birth certificate, soaking it in solvent, and then reprinting it with the desired information. [Atlas Shrugs, 7/20/2008] Computer forensics expert Dr. Neal Krawetz later examines “Techdude“‘s analysis and determines it to be completely specious. The analysis, Krawetz will determine, has been deliberately manipulated to produce false results. “TechDude did not make amateur mistakes,” Krawetz will conclude. “Instead, he intentionally manipulated the data so that it would support his theory.” [Neal Krawetz, 8/4/2008; Hacker Factor, 2011]

Cover of ‘The Obama Nation’ [Source: Threshold / FactCheck (.org)]Dr. Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and blogger who was deeply involved in the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to besmirch presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA), publishes a book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The title is a play on the word ‘abomination.’ In his book, Corsi, who writes for the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily and blogs at the extremist Free Republic, attacks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a fashion similar to that used against Kerry—combining fact, hyperbole, speculation, and outright falsehoods in an attempt to demean and disparage Obama’s character and professional career. The publisher, Threshold (a division of Simon and Schuster devoted to publishing conservative political works), calls the book “[s]crupolously sourced” and “[m]eticulously researched and documented…” Among other allegations, Corsi accuses Obama of growing up under the influence of Communist, socialist, and radical Islamic mentors; of deep and secretive affiliations with ‘60s radicals William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn; of espousing what he calls “black liberation theology” through his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright; connections to socialists and radical Islamists in Kenya, his father’s home country; deep and criminal ties to Chicago real-estate mogul Tony Rezko; and an intent to, if elected president, implement what Corsi calls “far-left” domestic and foreign policies. [Simon and Schuster, 8/1/2008; New York Times, 8/12/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] The book debuts as number one on the New York Times bestseller list, propelled by large bulk sales (large buys by particular organizations designed to artificially elevate sales figures) and an intensive marketing campaign carried out on conservative talk radio shows. “The goal is to defeat Obama,” Corsi says. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.” [New York Times, 8/12/2008]Allegations Roundly Debunked - Unfortunately for Corsi, his allegations do not stand up to scrutiny. FactCheck.org, a non-partisan “‘consumer advocate’ for voters” site run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, finds that Corsi’s book “is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.” It “is not a reliable source of facts about Obama.” FactCheck notes: “Corsi cites opinion columns and unsourced, anonymous blogs as if they were evidence of factual claims. Where he does cite legitimate news sources, he frequently distorts the facts. In some cases, Corsi simply ignores readily accessible information when it conflicts with his arguments.” The organization notes that Threshold’s chief editor, Republican operative Mary Matalin, said the book was not political, but rather “a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that.” FactCheck responds: “The prominent display of Corsi’s academic title (he holds a Ph.D. in political science) seems clearly calculated to convey academic rigor. But as a scholarly work, The Obama Nation does not measure up. We judge it to be what a hack journalist might call a ‘paste-up job,’ gluing together snippets from here and there without much regard for their truthfulness or accuracy.” [FactCheck (.org), 2008; FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] The St. Petersburg Times’s PolitiFact finds, “Taken as a whole, the book’s primary argument is that Obama is a likely communist sympathizer with ties to Islam who has skillfully hidden his true agenda as he ruthlessly pursues elected office,” an argument that the organization concludes is wholly unsupported by Corsi’s arguments and sources. [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008] And an Associated Press article finds the book a “collect[ion of] false rumors and distortions [designed] to portray Obama as a sort of secret radical who can’t be trusted.” [Associated Press, 8/16/2008]Unreliable Sources - As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Corsi’s sources are often unreliable: for example, his allegation that Obama’s father divorced his mother according to “Islamic sharia law” is based on a single and unverifiable post made by an anonymous blogger. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes that although Corsi points to his over 600 endnotes as proof of his “rigorous” sourcing, many of those endnotes refer to obscure, unverifiable Internet postings, blog posts, and opinion columns. Four of Corsi’s sources refer to his own work. “Where Corsi does cite news sources,” the site says, “he sometimes presents only those that are consistent with his case while ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit the picture he paints.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]Demonstrably False Claims - Some of Corsi’s claims are completely false: his statement that Obama did not dedicate his 2004 memoir, Dreams from My Father, to his parents or grandparents is easily debunked merely by reading the book’s introduction, in which Obama wrote, “It is to my family, though—my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents—that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book.” [Media Matters, 8/4/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] Corsi also claims, falsely, that Obama holds dual citizenship in the US and Kenya, though the Kenyan Constitution specifically prohibits dual citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] Corsi goes on to claim that Obama has long rejected his white family members from his mother’s side, including his grandparents in Hawaii who raised him for much of his childhood. This is part of Corsi’s argument about Obama’s secret embrace of the so-called “radical black rage” teachings of American activist Malcolm X. According to Corsi’s reading of Obama’s memoir: “His race, he self-determines, is African-American. In making that determination, he rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents. We do not have to speculate about this. Obama tells this to us outright; his words are direct, defying us to miss his meaning.” But PolitiFact calls this “a significant misreading of Obama’s memoir,” and notes that Corsi ignores a large amount of evidence that points to Obama’s continued close relationship with his white family members throughout his life. PolitiFact concludes, “To conclude that Obama rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents, Corsi has to significantly read against the memoir’s stated meaning. We find factual evidence also contradicts this statement, indicating that Obama maintained lifelong relations with his white relatives.” [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008]Insinuations and Leading Questions - Many of Corsi’s allegations are based on little more than questions and insinuations: for example, Corsi insinuates that Obama may not have stopped using marijuana and cocaine, as he admitted to doing during his high school years. Corsi writes: “Still, Obama has yet to answer questions whether he ever dealt drugs, or if he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended into his law school days or beyond. Did Obama ever use drugs in his days as a community organizer in Chicago, or when he was a state senator from Illinois? How about in the US Senate? If Obama quit using drugs, the public inquiry certain to occur in a general election campaign for the presidency will most certainly aim at the when, how and why…?” According to Media Matters, Obama wrote in his book Dreams from My Father that he stopped using drugs shortly after beginning college. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes: “Corsi… slyly insinuates—without offering any evidence—that Obama might have ‘dealt drugs’ in addition to using them. And he falsely claims that Obama has ‘yet to answer’ whether he continued using drugs during his law school days or afterward.… In fact, Obama has answered that question twice, including once in the autobiography that Corsi reviews in his book.” Guilt by Association - Corsi alleges that Obama has links to Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga, and claims that Obama is somehow linked to the violence surrounding the 2007 Kenyan presidential election. He bases his claim on a single visit by Obama and his wife, Michelle, to Kenya, where they publicly took AIDS tests to demonstrate the tests’ safety. In the testing process, Obama spoke briefly to the crowd. Odinga was on stage while Obama spoke. Corsi construes the speech as an Obama endorsement of Odinga, and, as FactCheck writes, “[h]e goes on to attribute all the violence in Kenya to an elaborate Odinga plot.” Corsi ignores the fact that during that trip, Obama also met with the other Kenyan presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, and with opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta. Human Rights Watch blamed the violence following the election on both Odinga and Kibaki and their followers. FactCheck notes that Corsi uses the logical fallacy of “guilt by association” to fill Chapters 3 through 7. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]Misquoting Other Sources - Media Matters finds that Corsi sometimes misquotes and rewrites source material, as when he attributed a claim concerning Obama’s supposedly untoward business relationship with Rezko to articles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, and Salon (.com) that made none of the claims Corsi attributes to them. Corsi also misquoted the conservative Web site NewsMax when he used one of its articles to falsely claim that Obama had been present at Chicago’s Trinity United Church during Reverend Wright’s denunciation of America’s “white arrogance.” (Obama was actually in Miami during Wright’s sermon.) [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] Corsi uses a man he calls one of Obama’s “closest” childhood friends, Indonesian Zulfan Adi, to back his assertion that Obama was once a practicing Muslim. However, Corsi does not report that Adi later retracted his claims about Obama’s religious practices, and admitted to knowing Obama for only a few months. Corsi also ignores a Chicago Tribune story that contains interviews with “dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends [who] show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia,” and other media reports that have conclusively proven Obama was never a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008). Ignoring the Obvious - Corsi repeatedly claims that Obama is a master speaker who bedazzles crowds with soaring flights of rhetoric, but never actually gives any specifics of what he intends to do as president. He writes: “At the end of every rhetorically uplifting speech Obama gives about the future of hope, millions of listeners are still left pondering, ‘Now what exactly did he say?’ If the politician is the message, as [campaign manager David] Axelrod and Obama have proclaimed, they can’t forever avoid telling us what precisely that message is.” But FactCheck notes that “Obama’s Web site is packed with details of what he proposes to do if elected. He lays out descriptions of his policy proposals, including tax cuts for most families and increases for those making more than $250,000 per year; a $150 billion, 10-year program to develop alternative energy sources and more efficient vehicles; a proposal to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and another to create a public health insurance plan for those whose employers don’t offer health coverage. Whether or not one agrees with them, Obama has indeed presented detailed plans for dozens of policies. It’s hard to see how anyone writing a book on Obama could fail to acknowledge their existence.” Conspiracy Theorist, 'Bigot,' and Veteran Liar - FactCheck notes: “Corsi is a renowned conspiracy theorist who says that [President] George Bush is attempting to create a North American Union… and that there is evidence that the World Trade Center may have collapsed [after the 9/11 attacks] because it was seeded with explosives. More recently, Corsi claimed that Obama released a fake birth certificate. We’ve debunked that twice now. [M]any of the themes in The Obama Nation are reworked versions of bogus chain e-mail smears.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] In August 2004, Media Matters found that Corsi routinely embraced both extremist opinions and personal invective. Corsi called Islam “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion.” Of Catholicism, he wrote, “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press.” Of Muslims themselves, he wrote, “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters—it all goes together.” And of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), he wrote: “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill [former President Clinton] satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?” [Media Matters, 8/6/2004] (Corsi posted these comments on the Free Republic under the moniker “jrlc,” and identified himself as “jrlc” on March 19, 2004.) [Free Republic, 3/18/2004; Jerome Corsi, 8/7/2004] An Obama campaign spokesman calls Corsi “a discredited, fringe bigot.” [Associated Press, 8/16/2008] FactCheck concludes, “In Corsi’s case, we judge that both his reputation and his latest book fall short when measured by the standards of good scholarship, or even of mediocre journalism.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] PolitiFact concludes: “A reader might think that because the book is printed by a mainstream publishing house it is well-researched and credible. On the contrary—we find The Obama Nation to be an unreliable document for factual information about Barack Obama.” [St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008]

Author Jerome Corsi, who has published a scathing, and well-debunked, challenge to presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s American citizenship (see August 1, 2008 and After), calls Obama’s birth certificate a “fake” in an interview on Fox News. Corsi tells interviewer Steve Doocy: “Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their Web site. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?” Corsi is referring to a scanned digital copy of Obama’s birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), which has been confirmed as true and valid by Hawaiian state officials (see June 27, 2008). Corsi claims, “The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released and the campaign refuses to release it.” Doocy asks if the copy isn’t “just… a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?” and Corsi responds: “No, it’s a—there’s been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it’s been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It’s a fake document that’s on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

A photograph of the actual Hawaiian birth certificate of Barack Obama, being held by FactCheck (.org) writer Joe Miller. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]FactCheck (.org), a non-partisan arm of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, certifies that its experts have verified that the birth certificate released by Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is valid (see June 13, 2008). Since the release of the digitally scanned image, a firestorm of controversy (see July 20, 2008) has erupted over the authenticity of the certificate, even after Hawaiian officials verified its validity (see June 27, 2008) and the discovery of a printed birth announcement from a Honolulu newspaper (see July 2008). FactCheck notes that much of the controversy has been sparked by author Jerome Corsi, whose recent book Obamanation makes a host of negative claims against Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), and who has told a Fox News interviewer that the birth certificate the campaign has is “fake” (see August 15, 2008). FactCheck releases the following statement: “We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined, and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving US citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as ‘supporting documents’ to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the USA just as he has always said.” The actual certificate is in the hands of Obama campaign officials in Chicago, FactCheck reports, and has the proper seals and signature from Hawaiian registrar Alvin Onaka. Certificate Meets Requirements for State Department Passport Issuance - FactCheck reports: “The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a US passport: ‘your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.’ The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above” in a photograph reproduced on FactCheck’s Web site. 'Short Form' Certificate - The copy possessed by the Obama campaign is called a “short form birth certificate.” The so-called “long form” is created by the hospital in which a child is born, and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents’ hometowns. The short form is what is provided by Hawaiian officials upon receiving a valid request for a birth certificate: It “is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department.” Scan Artifacts - The digitally scanned version released by the Obama campaign does indeed show “halos” around the black-text lettering, prompting some to claim that the text may have been copied onto an image of security paper. However, FactCheck writes, “the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.” Date Stamp, Blacked-Out Certificate Number - The digital scan also contains an unusual date stamp and a blacked-out certificate number. Campaign spokesperson Shauna Daly explains that the certificate is stamped July 2007 because that is when Hawaiian officials produced it for the presidential campaign. The campaign did not release a copy until mid-2008, leading some to speculate that the date stamp proved the digital scan was a forgery. Of the certificate number, Daly says that the campaign “couldn’t get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we’ve found out it’s pretty irrelevant for the outside world.” FactCheck writes, “The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.” 'African' Father - Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., is listed on the certificate as “African,” sparking claims that Obama is actually of Kenyan citizenship. Kurt Tsue of the Hawaii Department of Health tells FactCheck that the father and mother’s race are told to officials by the parents, and thusly “we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.” FactCheck writes: “We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama Sr. would have thought of and reported himself as ‘African.’ It’s certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.” Differences in Borders - The “security borders” on the digital scan do indeed look slightly different from other examples of Hawaii birth certificates. Tsue explains: “The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised.” He also confirms that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for “all reasonable purposes.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

Conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic Party “the minority party,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “a minority, a half minority at least,” and both Obama and the Democratic Party are “against the white person.” According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Savage goes on to say of the Democratic Party, “The membership is made up largely of minority blocs, the Hispanic caucus and the gay caucus—caucuses that are all against the white person.” Savage says that Democrats are “trying to pose as a centrist party, trying to win over the white male voter” and continues: “Now, the white women generally are not as hard-nosed about things as the white male, and so many white women don’t even understand that they’re being duped, and they vote for a Democrat, not knowing that they’re digging their own grave.… But now they’re going after the working-class white male, who is traditionally leery of the Sister Helen Prejeans [an opponent of capital punishment], the gay lobby, the caucuses and the other lobbies that are trying to take away his child’s birthright.” [Media Matters, 8/26/2008]

The Wall Street Journal prints an editorial questioning Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s record at Columbia University in New York City. Obama began his attendance at that university in 1981 and graduated with an undergraduate degree in 1983. The Journal does not directly assault Obama’s record of attendance, nor does it challenge the diploma he earned there, but instead accuses Obama of “barely mention[ing] his experience” at Columbia in his two published memoirs, accuses the Obama campaign of “refus[ing] to answer questions about Columbia and New York—which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them,” and asks: “Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?” (There is no senior thesis—see October 21, 2009). After noting that the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ) has refused to release McCain’s records from the US Naval Academy, the Journal calls Obama “a case apart” because of his lack of “a long track record in government.” It accuses Obama, in his memoirs, of “play[ing] up certain chapters in his life—perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation—and ignor[ing] others.” Citizens and journalists attempting to “exercise… due diligence” in the days before the presidential election are, the Journal claims, “meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past.” The Journal claims that one of Obama’s Columbia-era roommates, Sohale Siddiqi, has confirmed Obama’s transformation in New York from a dissolute youth to a serious young man, telling an Associated Press reporter: “We were both very lost. We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay.” The Journal writes, “For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view,” and claims, “Such caginess is grist for speculation.” It speculates that Obama’s Columbia transcript might “reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference,” though, noting that Obama later graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, says he obviously “knows how to get good grades.” The Journal echoes “others” who “speculate about ties to the Black Students Organization, though students active then don’t seem to remember him,” along with tales from “the far reaches of the Web [about] conspiracies about former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who became the candidate’s ‘guru and controller’ while at Columbia in the early 1980s.” The Journal notes that Brzezinski “laughs, and tells us he doesn’t ‘remember meeting him.’” The Journal concludes that few remember Obama during his two years in New York. “Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him,” it reports. Obama himself has told biographer David Mendell that during his time at Columbia, “I was just painfully alone and really not focused on anything, except maybe thinking a lot.” The Journal concludes: “Put that way, his time at Columbia sounds unremarkable. Maybe that’s what most pains a young memoirist and an ambitious politician who strains to make his life anything but unremarkable.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/11/2008]

Roger Ailes, a powerful Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988) and the founder and chairman of Fox News (see October 7, 1996), realizes that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to win the upcoming presidential election (see November 4, 2008). In preparation, Ailes begins hiring an array of conservatives to join his network (see November 3, 2003, July 2004, and October 26, 2009), many of whom he intends to groom for the 2012 presidential race. By the time the election is over, Ailes will have hired Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s political guru, and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR), an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate. (Ailes is able to woo both Rove and Huckabee away from CNN, which also offers them positions as paid commentators.) Soon, Ailes will hire several more possible Republican contenders, including the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), and former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Ailes fully intends to use Fox News as a platform for launching Republican presidential bids (see May 22, 2011), but his decision to hire Rove, Huckabee, Palin, and the others is also business-driven. A close friend of his will explain: “It would be easy to look at Fox and think it’s conservative because Rupert [Murdoch, the media executive who owns the Fox networks] and Roger are conservative and they program it the way they like. And to a degree, that’s true. But it’s also a business. And the way the business works is, they control conservative commentary the way ESPN controls the market for sports rights. If you have a league, you have a meeting with ESPN, you find out how much they’re willing to pay, and then everyone else agrees to pay the same amount if they want it.… It’s sort of the same at Fox. I was surprised at some of what was being paid until I processed it that way. If you’re ABC and you don’t have Newt Gingrich on a particular morning, you can put someone else on. But if you’re Fox, and Newt is moving and talking today, you got to have him. Otherwise, your people are like: ‘Where’s Newt? Why isn’t he on my channel?’” Ailes met secretly with Palin in September 2008, and will continue to court her for Fox after the campaign, even loaning her a private jet owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation. CNN will decline to offer her a position, and Ailes, through programming chief Bill Shine, will negotiate a three-year, $3 million deal to have Palin as a regular contributor and a host of prime-time specials. Amid all of this, Ailes does not want Fox News to be seen as an arm of the Republican Party (see December 2002 and October 11, 2009). [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] In 2010, the press will report that Fox News has “exclusive rights” to broadcast and interview four presumed 2012 Republican candidates, Palin, Gingrich, Huckabee, and Santorum (see September 27, 2010).

As reported by progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters, conservative radio hosts echo the claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has never produced a legitimate birth certificate proving his American citizenship, a claim long since debunked (Obama long ago posted a copy on his Web site—see June 13, 2008—and document experts and the Hawaii Department of Health will confirm its validity—see June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). Rick Roberts tells his audience that Obama’s birth certificate “hasn’t… been produced” and that no one in the Obama campaign has ever provided one for public scrutiny. Chris Baker says there “has never been a real birth certificate presented” by Obama. Michael Savage, taking the story one step further, says that the birth certificate “that was produced is a forgery.” Savage also claims that no one in Hawaii, Obama’s birth state, can find the original certificate: It “does not exist, they can’t find it in the Hawaii government. It’s never been produced. The one that was produced is a forgery.… I will never work for a man who has a birth certificate nobody can find. In other words, if you vote for Obama, you’re insane.” Savage goes on to claim that Obama is actually a Kenyan citizen, like his father, another claim long since disproven (see August 1, 2008 and After), and makes an equally illegitimate claim that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa, or radical Islamist school (see January 22-24, 2008), under the name “Barry Soetoro”; Savage even claims that Obama legally changed his name to “Barry Mohammed Soetoro” in Indonesia. No such name change has ever been documented. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008] Weeks later, Savage will assert, without proof, that Obama will visit Hawaii to address the issue of the birth certificate and cloak the trip by ostensibly visiting his gravely ill grandmother (see November 10, 2008).

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that Jerome Corsi, author of a book widely debunked as an attempt to defame presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After) and after leaving Kenya where he had been briefly detained by authorities for peddling his book without a work permit (see October 8, 2008), tells conservative radio host Lee Rodgers that he is a victim of journalistic suppression. “I think the story here is really the suppression of the press,” he says. “I hate to think of what the First Amendment is going to mean. If you write a negative book or criticize Obama, I think you’re now going to have to risk being thrown in jail or killed.” Rodgers agrees, “Yeah, well, that’s the mentality of these people.” Corsi also claims that he has been targeted by the Obama campaign: “I’m telling you, this is scary. I have heard from Obama supporters telling me: one way or another, boy, when we’re in office, we’re going to shut you down.” Corsi has repeatedly claimed that he is the victim of censorship by the Obama campaign (see August 16, 2008 and September 7, 2008). Corsi also tells Rodgers that he has “[d]isproved every point” that the Obama campaign made in a “40-page rebuttal” to his book. In reality, Corsi responded to the Obama campaign’s rebuttal by issuing a list of 11 corrections for the next printing, most of which corrected lies identified by the Obama campaign or outside sources. [Media Matters, 10/10/2008]

Sarah Obama, standing with her step-grandson Barack Obama in a 2009 photograph. [Source: Shooting from the Lip (.com)]Bishop Ron McRae of the Anabaptist Church of North America calls Sarah Onyango Obama, presidential candidate Barack Obama’s elderly step-grandmother. McRae, in Pennsylvania, speaks to Mrs. Obama in Kenya over a garbled and troubled telephone connection; Mrs. Obama uses at least one translator, Vitalis Akech Ogombe (a cousin of Obama’s and the grandson of Sarah Obama), because she speaks Luo and Swahili. (Apparently some, if not all, of the conversation is translated between English, Swahili, Luo, then back to Swahili, and then into English.) Additionally, the conversation takes place during a riotous celebration, and on the Kenyan side is being heard through a speakerphone. McRae set the conversation up through a contact, Kweli Shuhubia, a Kenyan Christian evangelist McRae knows as “Brother Tom,” and who, in an exchange of emails, apparently demanded money and goods for setting up the “operation,” as he and McRae call it. The telephone conversation lasts 14 minutes, and McRae apparently does not inform the Kenyans that they are being recorded. The resulting audiotape creates a firestorm of controversy over President Obama’s supposed birth in Kenya, because it appears that Mrs. Obama says she saw him born in Kenya. McRae quickly makes an edited portion of the audiotape available on the Internet. It says in part: McRae: - “Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to visit Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?” Ogombe: - “She says yes she was. She was present when Obama was born.” The edited version does not contain the next portion: McRae: - “Okay, when I come in December, I would like to go by the place, the hospital where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?” Ogombe: - “No. Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.” McRae: - “Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.” Ogombe: - “He was born in America, not in Mombasa.” McRae: - “Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was gonna go by and see where he was born.” Ogombe: - “Hawaii. She says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father, his father was also learning there. The state of Hawaii.” McRae: - “I thought she said she was present. Was she able to see him being born in Hawaii?” Translator: - “No, no.… She was not… she was here in Kenya. Obama was born in America.… Because the grandmother was back in Kenya and Obama was born in America, where he is from, where his father was learning, learning in America, the United States.” Instead of posting the entire audiotape, McRae will continue to insist that Sarah Obama confirmed Obama’s Kenyan birth. McRae submits an affidavit that states in part: “Though some few younger relatives, including Mr. Ogombe (one of the translators), have obviously been versed to counter such facts with the common purported information from the American news media that Obama was born in Hawaii, Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama was very adamant that her grandson, Senator Barack Hussein Obama, was born in Kenya, and that she was present and witnessed his birth in Kenya, not the United States. When Mr. Ogombe attempted to counter Sarah Obama’s clear responses to the question, verifying the birth of Senator Obama in Kenya, I asked Mr. Ogombe how she could be present at Barack Obama’s birth if the senator was born in Hawaii, but Ogombe would not answer the question, instead he repeatedly tried to insert that, ‘No, no, no. He was born in the United States!’” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, notes that a March 2007 story in the Chicago Tribune featured a quote from reporter Tim Jones, who spoke with Sarah Obama and quoted her as saying that she received a letter announcing Obama’s birth and she “was so happy to have a grandchild in the US.” PolitiFact concludes that the audiotape as presented was “tightly… edited” to give a false impression that Mrs. Obama had seen Barack Obama being born in a Kenyan hospital. [Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ; Obama Conspiracy (.org), 3/6/2009; St. Petersburg Times, 4/7/2011] McRae will release his edited audiotape in the last week of October 2008, in an apparent attempt to influence the upcoming presidential election. [Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ]Explanation of Hoax - Investigative blogger Greg Doudna, who later obtains a copy of the unedited audiotape and makes it, and a transcript, available on the Internet, explains McRae’s reasoning behind the hoax. “In this conversation McRae sought to obtain evidence on tape in support of a conspiracy theory circulating in certain right-wing circles in America, namely, that Barack Obama Jr. was not born in Hawaii in 1961 as represented, but actually was secretly born in Kenya. According to this theory, Obama’s mother, then-18-year-old Ann Dunham, waited until about seven or eight months into her pregnancy to take a grueling transcontinental flight halfway across the world to Kenya, there to discover that because of her pregnancy she was not allowed by an airline to get on the plane back to the US, and so was forced to have her baby—the future president of the United States—in a hospital in Kenya. Motivated by a desire to ensure that her child would be regarded as a US citizen with all rights thereof, she or fellow-conspirator family members plotted to have [Obama’s] birth recorded in Hawaii as if it happened in Hawaii, including placing a notice in a Hololulu newspaper of the birth, which was published a few days later (see July 2008). The plot succeeded (so the story goes), and the secret of the true circumstances of Barack Obama Jr.‘s birth in Kenya was closely held by the family, so much so that neither Ann Dunham nor any other family member ever spoke of a trip of Ann Dunham to Kenya in all the years since.” The “conspiracy” would have worked, Doudna writes, had Obama not decided to run for president. “No witness, document, evidence, or testimony has been produced which locates Ann Dunham anywhere outside the United States at any time in her life prior to 1967, when she and young Barack Jr. went to live for several years in Indonesia. Neither the outgoing Bush administration, the Republican Party, the McCain campaign, nor any of Obama’s earlier rivals for the Democratic nomination disclosed any awareness of evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, or in any other way ineligible to be president. Yet the notion is fervently believed, like an urban legend that will not die.” [Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ]Audiotape Used in Lawsuit - The edited audiotape will be presented as “evidence” of Obama’s supposed Kenyan citizenship in a lawsuit (see August 21-24, 2008).

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that conservative radio host Jim Quinn, of the syndicated show Quinn & Rose, says that the US should go back to a time where only landowners could vote. Quinn says: “Originally, if you didn’t own land, you didn’t vote, and there was a good reason for it: because those without property will always vote away the property of other people unto themselves, and that’s the beginning of the end.… Now—I mean, I can hear the appeal to the masses: ‘It’s not fair, it’s not the American way that you don’t get to vote,’ but let me ask you a question: If I don’t own anything, what kind of a problem do I have with voting for a measure—a tax, a law—that takes somebody else’s property and gives it to me? I have no stake in personal property ownership ‘cause I don’t have any. Now, back in the day, when this was the law of the land, anybody who wanted to vote needed to step up to the plate, achieve, get a stake in America, and then vote.” Quinn equates non-landowners’ right to vote with what he calls “organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses.” [Media Matters, 10/21/2008] A day later, radio host Michael Savage says that public assistance recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that Americans who receive public assistance should not be able to vote. “Do you think a person on welfare has the right to vote?” he asks. “I don’t. Why should a person who is on public assistance maintain the right to vote? Tell me why. Where is it written that they should have the right to vote?… I support them, and they should have the same vote I do? That would be like saying an infant has the right to vote or an insane person has the right to vote. Why should a welfare recipient have the right to vote? They’re only gonna vote themselves a raise.” Savage then brings up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: “So if you get a demagogue like Obama coming along, and he says to the welfare recipient, elect me, and I’ll make sure that we have trickle-up poverty, and the rich—so-called, that is anyone who works for a living—will give you more money, more welfare, of course you’re gonna vote for the demagogue Obama. See, if I was in charge, I’d pass a law which says, OK, you can’t support yourself for whatever reason, you’re on welfare, you lose the right to vote.… You get back on the self-sufficiency, you get the right to vote. Then we’ll have a fair election in America. Otherwise, it’s all over. We have a communist nation either now or in the very near future.” [Media Matters, 10/23/2008] A day before, radio host Jim Quinn said that only landowners should be allowed to vote (see October 21, 2008).

Screenshot of Pamela Geller during an appearance on Fox News. [Source: Conservative News Watch (.org)]Pamela Geller, who owns the far-right blog Atlas Shrugs, posts a long, intricate screed from Rudy Schulz that claims President Obama could not have been born in Hawaii, because his mother Stanley Ann Dunham was attending classes at the University of Washington at the time. Schulz also states his belief, supported by a large amount of supposition and exposition but no real facts, that Obama forged his Hawaiian birth certificate to hide his true father: slain civil rights leader Malcolm X. The claim that Dunham was attending classes in Washington State at the time of his birth was first promoted on conservative news blog WorldNetDaily by author Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008), who stated, “How Dunham was able to travel the 2,680 air miles from Honolulu to Seattle only a few days after the birth of her baby is not disclosed in the currently available public record concerning President Obama’s birth.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/4/2009] Evidence that Dunham registered for classes at the University of Washington in mid-August 1961, but actually arrived in Washington to begin her coursework in September 1961, with infant Barack in tow, is ignored by Corsi, Schulz, and Geller. [Seattle Times, 2/5/2008] After Geller receives a barrage of criticism and mockery over the “Malcolm X” claim, she updates the original blog post to read: “The ‘Atlas says that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child’ charge has gone viral among leftards and lizards. The only problem with it is that it is false. I am not the author of this post, and I posted it because the writer did a spectacular job documenting Obama’s many connections with the far left. The Malcolm X claim is one minor part of this story, and was of interest to me principally as part of the writer’s documentation that Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been where the Obama camp says she was at various times. I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did—but there remain many, many unanswered questions about his early life and upbringing.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008]

Chicago resident Andy Martin, who has been accusing Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) of being a secret Muslim since 2004, abruptly shifts his story. Now, Martin claims, Obama is not the child of a Muslim father, Barack Obama Sr., as documents have clearly and repeatedly shown (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008), but the child of Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American activist who was suspected in the 1950s of having ties to Communist organizations. Martin’s accusations, though never supported by fact, have garnered a great deal of coverage in some corners of the Internet. Martin now tells a CNN reporter that Obama’s “father was Frank Marshall Davis.” He gives no proof, and implies he has nothing more than a gut feeling. Davis was a black poet and political activist who moved to Hawaii in 1948. He wrote for a newspaper which the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) accused of being a Communist front. Right-wing Web sites have been claiming since 2007 that Davis was not only a Communist Party member but also the mentor to Obama in his teen years who he refers to in his autobiography as “Frank.” Martin’s most recent burst of prominence was an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News broadcast, where he said that “Obama’s role as a community organizer [in Chicago] was a political staging ground perpetuated by the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers.” Martin also told Hannity that Obama “probably had met William Ayers in New York, and was coming here to lay the foundations for what he thought would be some sort of political movement.” An Obama presidency, Martin predicted, would lead to “a socialist revolution, which attempts to essentially freeze out anybody who’s not part of this radical ideology.” Martin readily admits that his current assertion about Obama’s parentage refutes his four-year-old claims that Obama is a Muslim. He calls himself “an honest writer and an honest researcher.… I’m known as a person who strives for the truth.” The fault is Obama’s, he says, because he “hasn’t told the truth to the American people.” [Raw Story, 10/27/2008] In a wide-ranging article about the “birther” controversy, Salon columnist Alex Koppelman will later note that Martin was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law. [Salon, 12/5/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, many different conservative radio hosts repeat a falsehood about presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) that originates on the Drudge Report. According to the original report, Obama told a radio audience in 2001 that he regretted the US Supreme Court did not pursue “wealth redistribution,” a concept some associate with socialism. Obama did not make such a statement; instead he said during that interview that it was a tragedy the civil rights movement “became so court-focused” in trying to bring about political and social equality. Minneapolis radio host Chris Baker misquotes Obama by claiming that he said “we gotta have economic justice and the Supreme Court ought to weigh in on redistributing wealth.” Baker adds: “Yeah, it’s too bad you kind of stuck with the Constitution as it was. It’s a tragedy that redistribution of wealth was not pursued by the Supreme Court. Can you believe that?” Baker also claims that Obama “wants to use the Supreme Court to reinterpret the Constitution in order to force the redistribution of wealth.” Baker is not the only radio host to repeat the falsehood. Sean Hannity tells his radio audience, referring to the 2001 interview, “Obama actually believes the Constitution is defective because it doesn’t allow judges to redistribute wealth.” He adds: “if he becomes president, [Obama] wants the Supreme Court and other federal courts to literally have the power to spread the wealth around and redistribute the wealth. Those are his words, his voice.” He goes on to say flatly, “Obama is a socialist.” Mark Levin tells his listeners, “what the [Supreme] Court should have done from Obama’s point of view was impose socialism from the bench.” Levin levels another false accusation against Obama: that he wants to reinterpret the 14th Amendment “to compel as a matter of constitutional law, the socialist agenda. In other words, constitutionalize redistribution of wealth.” Radio hosts Michael Savage, Jim Quinn, Brian Sussman, and others reiterate the claims, with Quinn telling listeners: “He just got done telling you that the Constitution’s only half-done. He needs to write the other half—you know, the other half where we decide how much we take from you and give to that guy down the street.” Like many of his colleagues, Sussman plays an edited clip of Obama’s 2001 statement to bolster his claims. [Media Matters, 10/28/2008; Media Matters, 11/6/2008]

Hawaii’s Director of Health Dr. Chiyome Fukino says she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the Hawaii Department of Health holds Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s original birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008). Fukino says that she has “personally seen and verified that the Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” Fukino and Onaka thereby verify that Obama is, indeed, an American citizen. Fukino releases the statement in an attempt to stem the tide of conspiracy theories that assert Obama is not a US citizen—“birtherism”—and therefore cannot be eligible to be president. Fukino adds that no state official, including Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), ever issued instructions that Obama’s certificate be handled differently. Hawaii state law prohibits the release of the so-called “long form” birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest; state law says that the “short form” the state releases to its citizens, and that Obama has long ago made public (see June 13, 2008), is legal and valid in and of itself. State courts in Ohio, Pennsylvania (see August 21-24, 2008), and Washington State have recently dismissed court challenges to Obama’s citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008; Associated Press, 10/31/2008] Fukino tells a Honolulu reporter: “This has gotten ridiculous (see July 20, 2008). There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy.” Asked if this “[w]ill be enough to quiet the doubters,” Fukino responds: “I hope so. We need to get some work done.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

President-elect Obama and his family, acknowledging his election victory. From left: Barack Obama, his daughters Sasha and Malia, and his wife, First Lady-elect Michelle Obama. [Source: Hollywood Reporter]Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) wins the 2008 election for US president. He replaces President George W. Bush, a Republican. Obama becomes the first African-American president in the history of the US. He defeats Senator John McCain (R-AZ) by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin in the national popular vote, and by a 365-173 margin in the electoral vote. The Democratic Party also increases its lead in the Senate, with a 56-41 margin, and a 255-175 margin in the House of Representatives. Finally, Democrats gain a +1 margin in the nation’s 11 gubernatorial elections. [National Public Radio, 11/2008; United Press International, 11/5/2008] Obama will begin his four year term as president on January 20, 2009, after a transition period (see January 20-21, 2009).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that President-elect Barack Obama’s grandmother “suspiciously died virtually the night before the election,” in an apparent attempt to question Obama’s pre-election trip to Hawaii. Obama visited his grandmother in late October, shortly before her death on November 3. Savage ties in his questions about Obama’s grandmother and her “suspicious death” to discredited claims that Obama has been unable to verify his US citizenship. Savage tells his listeners: “Well, we don’t even know where Obama was born. His grandmother died the night before the election. There’s a lot of questions around this character that the media won’t answer. Let’s start with what country he’s from. Why was the birth certificate never produced? Why in the world did he take time off from the campaign to visit the grandmother who then suddenly and suspiciously died virtually the night before the election? Tell me about that.” Savage and other conservative commentators have suggested that Obama went to Hawaii, not to visit his gravely ill grandmother, but to address charges that his birth certificate is not valid. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008] Savage is one of a number of conservative radio hosts to spread false rumors about Obama’s birth certificate (see October 8-10, 2008). Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate months before (see June 13, 2008). A number of organizations have verified that Obama’s birth certificate is valid and authentic (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008), as have Hawaii Health Department officials (see October 30, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/23/2008; FactCheck (.org), 11/1/2008] According to Talkers Magazine, Savage is third in talk-radio listenership across the US, behind fellow conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008]

Conservative radio host Michael Savage, who has previously accused President-elect Barack Obama of being part of “the first affirmative-action [campaign] in American history” (see February 1, 2008), of being a radical Islamist (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, and April 3, 2008), and of being sympathetic to the Nazis (see March 13, 2008), says Obama will oversee the “wholesale replacement of competent white men” from government jobs through the federal, state, and even local levels. As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage tells his listeners: “You haven’t seen any of what’s coming in this country. You are going to see the wholesale replacement of competent white men, and I’m targeting exactly the group that’s gonna be thrown out of jobs in the government. And I’ll say it, and I’ll be the first to say it, and I may be not the only—the last to say it. I am telling you that there’s gonna be a wholesale firing of competent white men in the United States government up and down the line, in police departments, in fire departments. Everywhere in America, you’re going to see an exchange that you’ve never seen in history, and it’s not gonna be necessarily for the betterment of this country.” Accusation of 'Social Promotion' - Savage says that Obama was “socially promoted” to the presidency, a disparaging reference to the practice of promoting children to higher grades even if they have not done the work necessary to be promoted, and says: “If you’re socially promoted your whole life and nobody challenges you because you’re of the proper constitution and composition and you look exactly right and no one’s—everyone’s afraid to say a word to you, why, you then go to Harvard, you then go to the law review, you then get elected, you then get elected to the next level. This is what happens in a country that’s intimidated by its own policies and its own fears.” [Media Matters, 11/19/2008]Obama Avoided Mention of Race on College Application? - Some of Obama’s classmates recall that when he applied for Harvard Law School, he refused to indicate his race so as to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an action the Obama campaign has declined to affirm or deny. In 1990, as a law student defending the program, Obama wrote that he had “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action” during his educational career. [New York Times, 8/3/2008]

The conservative Washington Times, a staunch opponent of President-elect Barack Obama, publishes an editorial predicting that the incoming Obama administration will, in some form or fashion, move to “exterminate” babies with disabilities and other “useless” Americans through its promised reform of the US health care system, similar to actions taken by the Nazis before World War II. The Times provides a brief synopsis of Adolf Hitler’s “T4 Aktion” program designed, in the words of the Times, “to exterminate ‘useless eaters,’ babies born with disabilities. When any baby was born in Germany, the attending nurse had to note any indication of disability and immediately notify T4 officials—a team of physicians, politicians, and military leaders. In October 1939 Hitler issued a directive allowing physicians to grant a ‘mercy death’ to ‘patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health.’ Thereafter, the program expanded to include older children and adults with disabilities, and anyone anywhere in the Third Reich was subject to execution who was blind, deaf, senile, retarded, or had any significant neurological condition, encephalitis, epilepsy, muscular spasticity, or paralysis. Six killing centers were eventually established, and an estimated quarter-million people with disabilities were executed.” The Times draws a parallel between the Nazis and the Obama administration’s support for legal abortion and for physician-assisted suicide, which it equates with “euthanasia.” The incoming administration will, the Times fears, begin “selecting” babies with disabilities for what apparently will be “selective abortions.” It quotes the Reverend Briane K. Turley as saying: “Were God’s design for us left unhindered, we could naturally expect to welcome 40,000 or more newborn infants with Down syndrome each year in the US. And yet we have reduced that number to just under 5,500. These data strongly indicate that, in North America, we have already discovered a new, ‘final solution’ for these unusual children and need only to adapt our public policies to, as it were, ‘cure’ all Down syndrome cases.” Turley, the Times notes, claims that “there is growing evidence suggesting that, among health care practitioners and systems, the central motivation behind legally enforced or high pressure screenings is economics.” The Times then adds: “[A]nd the results seem to bear him out. America’s T4 program—trivialization of abortion, acceptance of euthanasia, and the normalization of physician assisted suicide—is highly unlikely to be stopped at the judicial, administrative, or legislative levels anytime soon, given the Supreme Court’s current and probable future makeup during the Obama administration, the administrative predilections that are likely from that incoming administration, and the makeup of the new Congress.” The Times predicts a new “final solution” of “extermination” that will start with disabled infants and will progress “from prenatal to postnatal to child to adult.” [Washington Times, 11/23/2008] The editorial anticipates the “deather” claims that many conservatives will make in the summer of 2009 (see January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, May 13, 2009, June 24, 2009, June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23-24, 2009, July 24, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 31, 2009 - August 12, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, Shortly Before August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 12, 2009, August 12, 2009, and August 13, 2009).

A portion of the advertisement that runs in the Chicago Tribune. [Source: We the People (.org)]Robert L. Schulz, a wealthy anti-tax activist from upstate New York and the chairman of the We the People Foundation, takes out the second of two ads in the Chicago Tribune questioning whether President Barack Obama is a “natural born citizen” and thusly eligible to be president. Schulz confirms that his non-profit foundation spent “tens of thousands of dollars” on the ads. The ads echo long-debunked claims that Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) is fraudulent (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, and November 10, 2008). Cases challenging Obama’s citizenship have been thrown out of numerous state courts (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), and the State of Hawaii has vouched for the authenticity of the Obama birth certificate, which by state law is locked in a state government vault with all other such “long form birth certificates” issued by Hawaiian officials (see July 1, 2009). Schulz’s ad raises the following claims: The birth form released by Obama was “an unsigned, forged, and thoroughly discredited” live birth form, Schulz says. Digital and real copies of Obama’s birth certificate have been examined by experts, including members of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and pronounced real (see August 21, 2008). According to Schulz, “Hawaiian officials will not confirm” that Obama was born in their state. Hawaiian officials initially did resist releasing a copy of the certificate, citing state privacy laws. However, Hawaii’s health director and head of vital statistics reviewed Obama’s birth certificate in the department’s vault and vouched for its authenticity (see October 30, 2008). Schulz says that legal affidavits state Obama was born in Kenya. Those affidavits were filed by challengers to Obama’s citizenship, and those challenges have been dismissed by a variety of courts (see August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008). Obama’s paternal grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended Obama’s birth in Kenya, Schulz says. Schulz is referring to claims by street preacher Ron McRae who interviewed the second wife of Obama’s grandfather, Sarah Obama, via long-distance telephone (see October 16, 2008 and After). The audiotape clearly shows that the assembled Obama relatives, and the translator who spoke to McRae, repeatedly stated that Obama was born in Hawaii. Schulz says that “US law in effect in 1961 [the year of Obama’s birth] denied citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.” Schulz is incorrect. US law states that any child born in the US is a legitimate citizen regardless of his parents’ nationalities and/or citizenships. Obama’s father had dual Kenyan/British citizenship, and his mother was a US citizen. Had Obama been born outside of US territory and his mother Ann Dunham been under 19 years of age, which she was, Obama would indeed not have been a citizen at the time of his birth, though the provisions of this law were subsequently loosened and made retroactive for government employees serving abroad and their families. The point is moot, because Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu. Schulz says that in 1965, Obama’s mother relinquished whatever Kenyan or US citizenship she and Obama had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen. Schulz has produced no evidence to back this claim; Dunham did not file any of the documentation required to renounce one’s US citizenship, and even so, would not have jeopardized Obama’s citizenship in doing so. Obama and his mother moved to Indonesia in 1968, and returned to Hawaii while Obama was still in grade school. Schulz provides a reproduced Indonesian school document that states Obama’s citizenship at the time as “Indonesian,” but the same document lists Obama’s birthplace as “Honolulu, Hawaii.” [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008]Schulz claims his challenges to Obama are not motivated by political partisanship. “We never get involved in politics,” he says of We The People. “We avoid it like the plague.” However, Schulz has done battle with local and state authorities for years; in 2007, a federal judge ordered him to shutter his Web site because he and his organization were, in the words of the Justice Department’s tax division, using the site to promote “a nationwide tax-fraud scheme.” Schulz now says he is being targeted by government operatives who are attempting to silence him. He says his group attempted to buy a similar ad in USA Today, but could not afford the cost. [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008; Salon, 12/5/2008]

Salon columnist Alex Koppelman explores the widening sets of claims that purport to prove President Barack Obama is not a US citizen—the heart of the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory. The Obama campaign long ago produced a valid birth certificate that allowed Obama to run legitimately as a presidential candidate (see June 13, 2008), Obama’s mother Ann Dunham has also affirmed her son’s citizenship, and Hawaiian officials have confirmed that Obama was indeed born in a hospital in Honolulu (see October 30, 2008). However, some on the right continue to promulgate the tale of Obama’s supposed Kenyan citizenship, or Indonesian citizenship, or British citizenship. The Chigago Tribune recently ran a paid advertisement questioning Obama’s citizenship (see December 3, 2008). Conservative news and opinion blogs such as WorldNetDaily run stories on a near-daily basis challenging Obama’s citizenship, or producing hoax “birth certificates” that “prove” Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya, or other locales (see July 20, 2008). Plaintiffs have filed lawsuits challenging Obama’s citizenship in a number of state courts, all of which have been rejected (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), and a similar case goes up for review in the Supreme Court (that case also challenges Republican presidential contender John McCain’s citizenship, as McCain was born in the former Panama Canal Zone to parents serving in the US military, another legitimate way of securing citizenship—see March 14 - July 24, 2008 and August 21-24, 2008). Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, notes that some people will never let go of the idea that Obama is not a citizen, no matter what level of proof is provided. “There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” he says. “The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it.… Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.” Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant, he says. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates, agrees. People who believe in a conspiracy theory “develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence,” Berlet says. “As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy.” Social psychologist Evan Harrington adds: “One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special. The real evidence is out there, [and] you can give them all this evidence, but they’ll have convenient ways to discredit [it].” Koppelman notes that during the presidential election, so-called “birthers” said that they would drop their claims if only Obama would release the “long form” of his birth certificate, even though to do so would be to violate Hawaii’s privacy laws, which keep all such documents under lock and key. During the campaign, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, released a statement saying she had verified that the state has the original birth certificate on record (see October 30, 2008), and that Obama’s Hawaiian birth is a matter of state record. Experts with the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, part of the FactCheck (.org) organization, have examined the certificate and verified its authenticity (see August 21, 2008), as has PolitiFact (see June 27, 2008). Koppelmann notes that the conspiracy theory has grown to the point where talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage have suggested that Obama used the occasion of his grandmother’s death to go to Hawaii to alter the record (see November 10, 2008). Koppelman notes that many who align themselves with the “birther” movement are well-known conspiratorists. Author Jerome Corsi, who attacked Obama’s citizenship in a pre-election book (see August 1, 2008 and After), has spoken of “secret government plans” to form a “North American Union” with Canada and Mexico. Philip Berg, who filed the lawsuit that had until now drawn the most public attention, asserts that the 9/11 attacks were staged by the US government (so-called “trutherism”). Another critic, Andy Martin, who seems to be the source of the rumor that Obama is a Muslim and is a strong “birther” proponent, was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law (see October 17-22, 2008). Robert Schulz, who ran the Tribune ads, is a well-known tax protester and anti-government rhetorician. [Salon, 12/5/2008]

Glenn Beck, the former CNN Headline News talk show host who has just signed with Fox News, has a discussion with Fox chief executive Roger Ailes about his intentions as Fox’s newest host. Beck later recalls: “I wanted to meet with Roger and tell him: ‘You may not want to put me on the air. I believe we are in dire trouble, and I will never shut up’.” Far from warning Beck to tone down his rhetoric, Ailes tells Beck that Fox’s primary mission is now to serve as the opposition to the newly elected President Obama (see November 4, 2008). According to Beck, Ailes tells him: “I see this as the Alamo. If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.” One of Beck’s primary themes on Headline News has been his fear that the US is becoming a socialist nation, a theme he says Ailes encourages him to develop on Fox. Fox vice president Bill Shine will say: “I think we’ve been doing a very good job of trying to point out some things that maybe some other news organizations haven’t pointed out. We’re kind of looking for things that people aren’t being told.” Major Garrett, Fox’s White House correspondent, will say: “[T]here very may well be a curiosity about the Fox brand interacting with the Obama brand. There may be an expectation of a higher degree of skepticism” (see October 13, 2009). One of Beck’s first additions to his Fox studio is a caricature of Obama drawn to resemble former Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. [Los Angeles Times, 3/6/2009]

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has already launched attacks on President-elect Barack Obama, including attempting to blame him for the global recession even though he has not yet taken office (see November 5-12, 2008). Today he tells his listeners that he hopes Obama’s administration is a failure. (Limbaugh’s words are publicly reported by the liberal organization ThinkProgress; his remarks are carried on his Web site, but are accessible only to those who pay for access.) Limbaugh says, “I disagree fervently with the people on our [Republican] side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds.’” Limbaugh says “a major American print publication” has asked him to write a brief statement on his “hope for the Obama presidency.” Limbaugh’s response: “So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, ‘Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” When Limbaugh is interrupted by someone in the studio laughing, he continues: “What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. [Limbaugh often refers to the mainstream media as the ‘drive-by media.’] I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: ‘Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.’ Somebody’s gotta say it.” [Think Progress, 1/20/2009]

President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office as administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His wife Michelle holds the Bible used to administer the oath, which will be redone the second day because of a minor error in Roberts’s delivery. [Source: Access Hollywood]Barack Obama (D-IL) is officially inaugurated as president of the United States. He is the 44th US president. He was elected on November 4, 2008 (see November 4, 2008), and then went through a short transition period. [Washington Times, 1/20/2009] Obama is forced to retake the oath of office after Chief Justice John Roberts errs in delivering it during the inaugural ceremonies. Roberts administers the “second” oath in the White House’s map room; Roberts asks Obama if he is ready and Obama says, “I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly.” Roberts initially said the word “faithfully” out of order, prompting some conservative bloggers and reporters to claim that Obama’s presidency is illegitimate. White House counsel Greg Craig says: “We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the president was sworn in appropriately yesterday. But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time.” The oath properly reads, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” [CNN, 1/21/2009] Obama takes the first oath on a Bible that belonged to former President Abraham Lincoln, on loan from the Library of Congress. The second oath is taken without a Bible, which is allowed under the Constitution but will lead to further criticism from Obama opponents. [St. Petersburg Times, 1/22/2009]

Media critic and columnist George Neumayr writes that the Democrats’ economic stimulus plan will include enforced abortions and euthanasia for less productive citizens. Neumayr calls this claim a once “astonishingly chilly and incomprehensible stretch [that] is now blandly stated liberal policy,” basing it on the Democrats’ plan to provide money to the states for “family planning.” Neumayr equates the funding, which would go for such initiatives as teaching teenagers about the use of condoms and measures to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, to the famous Jonathan Swift essay of 1729, “A Modest Proposal,” which satirically suggested that impoverished Irish families might sell their children to rich Englishmen for food. “Change a few of the words and it could be a Democratic Party policy paper,” Neumayr writes. “Swift suggested that 18th-century Ireland stimulate its economy by turning children into food for the wealthy. [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA] proposes stimulating the US economy by eliminating them. Other slumping countries, such as Russia and France, pay parents to have children; it looks like Obama’s America will pay parents to contracept or kill them. Perhaps the Freedom of Choice Act can also fall under the Pelosi ‘stimulus’ rationale. Why not? An America of shovels and scalpels will barrel into the future. Euthanasia is another shovel-ready job for Pelosi to assign to the states. Reducing health care costs under Obama’s plan, after all, counts as economic stimulus too. Controlling life, controlling death, controlling costs. It’s all stimulus in the Brave New World utopia to come.” Like a Washington Times editorial from months earlier (see November 23, 2008), Neumayr uses the term “final solution” for the Democrats’ economic proposal, the term for the Nazis’ World War II-era extermination of millions of Jews and other “undesirables.” He writes: “‘Unwanted’ children are immediately seen as an unspeakable burden. Pregnancy is a punishment, and fertility is little more than a disease. Pelosi’s gaffe illustrates the extent to which eugenics and economics merge in the liberal utilitarian mind.” “Malthus lives,” he says, referring to the 19th century scholar Thomas Robert Malthus, whose theories of ruthless natural selection predated Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Neumayr goes on to accuse “Hillary Clinton’s State Department” of preparing to set up programs of “people-elimination,” predicated on what he calls “UN-style population control ideology” and “third-world abortions.” [American Spectator, 1/27/2009]

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore, appearing as a guest on Fox News host Glenn Beck’s show, compares Social Security to “a big Ponzi scheme.” Moore and Beck are discussing the issue of the US debt, and Moore compares the cycle of different government agencies buying and selling portions of the debt to one another to Social Security, saying: “It’s very much like the way Social Security works. It’s a big Ponzi scheme. It’s like a big vault of IOUs.” [Media Matters, 2/2/2009; Media Matters, 9/7/2010] Beck will later call Social Security a “Stalinist” program designed to forcibly redistribute wealth to poorer citizens (see January 27, 2010).

Fox News graphic making disproven claims about Congressional health care reform proposals. [Source: Media Matters]The Wall Street Journal, Fox News anchors, conservative Web news purveyor Matt Drudge, and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh promulgate a discredited claim by health care lobbyist Betsy McCaughey that the economic recovery bill pending in Congress includes a provision that would have the government “essentially dictate treatments” for sick Americans. McCaughey wrote a commentary for Bloomberg News on February 9 that makes the claim (see February 9, 2009); Drudge and Limbaugh echo and add to the claim the same day. The next day, the Wall Street Journal’s senior economic writer, Stephen Moore, appearing on Fox News’s flagship morning news broadcast America’s Newsroom, joins news anchors Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly in promoting the same claim (see October 13, 2009), with Moore saying that the provision would “hav[e] the government essentially dictate treatments.” Moore credits Limbaugh with informing him of the claim, saying: “I just learned of this myself yesterday. In fact, Rush Limbaugh made a big deal out of it on his radio show and it just—it caused all sorts of calls into congressional offices.” On February 10, Limbaugh takes credit for spreading the claim, telling listeners: “Betsy McCaughey writing at Bloomberg, I found it. I detailed it for you, and now it’s all over mainstream media. Well, it’s—it headlined Drudge for a while last night and today. Fox News is talking about it.” McCaughey is wrong in the claim: according to an analysis of the legislative language by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, “the language in the House bill that McCaughey referenced does not establish authority to ‘monitor treatments’ or restrict what ‘your doctor is doing’ with regard to patient care but, rather, addresses establishing an electronic records system such that doctors would have complete, accurate information about their patients ‘to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care.’” Moore says: “[T]his news story really has exploded on the public scene in just the last 24 hours, Bill. We’ve been just inundated with complaints from people about the implications of having the government essentially dictate treatments.” Moore later goes on to add that the bill “especially will affect elderly people, because one of the ways, if we move more towards a nationalized health care system, as this bill would move us one step towards that, what you have to do to restrain costs—what many other countries do, like Canada and Britain, is they essentially, Bill, ration care. And they tell patients you are eligible for this kind of care, but this is too expensive. And so what this bill would essentially do is set up a kind of pricing mechanism to tell people, yes, we can afford to treat you for this, but not that.” Moore encourages viewers to “express their outrage over this” before Congress takes the issue up. Kelly adds another false claim: that the bill discourages doctors to act on their own judgment and promotes medical decisions “in the spirit of uniform health care.” Kelly notes, “That sounds dangerously like socialized medicine.” Hemmer also makes the false claim that the legislation contains “rules [that] appear to set the stage for health care rationing for seniors, new limits on medical research, and new rules guiding decisions your doctor can make about your health care.” Hemmer calls the provision a “midnight health care insertion” into the Senate spending bill. [Media Matters, 2/10/2009]

Fox News on-air graphic repeating a typo from the original Senate Republican Communications Center press release. [Source: Media Matters]Fox News anchor Jon Scott, co-anchor of the “straight news” program Happening Now, uses research provided in a Senate Republican Communications Center (SRCC) press release to make dubious claims about how the Obama economic recovery plan “grew, and grew, and grew” over time. While Scott reports the claims, Fox displays seven graphics illustrating them. The graphics’ textual content hews so closely to the SRCC’s press release that it even repeats a typographical error found in the original memo. Scott and the on-air graphics cite the SRCC’s original sources for their information, which include Politico, the Congressional Quarterly, the Denver Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, but neither Scott nor the graphics acknowledge the SRCC as the source of the research. The typo is in the seventh and last graphic, incorrectly citing the date of a Wall Street Journal article as “12/19/09.” The next day, Scott apologizes, but only for the typo, prompting Washington Post media critic and CNN host Howard Kurtz to say: “We sometimes jab at the pundits for using talking points, but in the case of Fox News anchor Jon Scott, it was literally true this week.… You should be apologizing for using partisan propaganda from the GOP without telling your viewers where it came from. Talk about missing the point” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 2/10/2009; Media Matters, 2/15/2009]

The Washington Times spins off a recent op-ed by health industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey (see February 9, 2009) to claim that the Obama administration will attempt to save money by euthanizing old people, disabled people, and sickly infants. The editorial begins with the “chilling” idea of a national medical information database that will allow the government to “track… your every visit to a health care provider—where you went, who you saw, what was diagnosed, and what care was provided.” The Obama administration, the Times claims, will use that information to decide which people deserve the more expensive lifesaving treatments and which ones must be denied in the interest of cost efficiency. “If it costs too much to treat you, and you are nearing the end of your life anyway, you may have to do with less, or with nothing,” the Times writes. “You just aren’t worth the cost.… What nondescript GS-11 will be cutting care from Aunt Sophie after her sudden relapse before he or she heads to the food court for some stir fry?” The elderly, the physically and mentally disabled, all “whose health costs are great and whose ability to work productively in the future” will, the Times writes, be allowed to die or even exterminated. So will premature babies, badly wounded soldiers, and others as yet to be determined. The Times again cites Nazi Germany’s “T4 Aktion” program of forcibly euthanizing less productive citizens (see November 23, 2008) as a likely template for the Obama program. [Washington Times, 2/11/2009]

Conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas uses a recent editorial by health care industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey (see February 9, 2009) to accuse the Obama administration of planning a “euthanasia” program to exterminate hapless Americans. President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, Thomas writes, “means the government will decide who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t. It is survival of the fittest in practice.” Thomas then writes that the Obama administration’s support of legal abortions will inevitably lead to “euthanasia” of older and less productive citizens. He quotes a 1979 book by theologian Francis Schaeffer and future Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? as saying, “Will a society which has assumed the right to kill infants in the womb—because they are unwanted, imperfect, or merely inconvenient—have difficulty in assuming the right to kill other human beings, especially older adults who are judged unwanted, deemed imperfect physically or mentally, or considered a possible social nuisance?” Thomas then writes, “No one should be surprised at the coming embrace of euthanasia.” Schaeffer and Koop’s prediction that “the next candidates for arbitrary reclassification as nonpersons are the elderly” now “seems to be coming true,” Thomas writes. He also repeats a claim from the 92-year-old Koop that in 1988, he had suffered from an ailment that temporarily paralyzed him. Under Britain’s government-run health care, Koop claims, “I would have been nine years too old to have the surgery that saved my life and gave me another 21 years.” Soon, Thomas writes, “dying will become a patriotic duty when the patient’s balance sheet shows a deficit.” [Tribune Media Services, 2/18/2009]

CNBC stock analyst Rick Santelli’s “impromptu” on-air “rant” against President Obama’s economic stimulus program, in which Santelli calls for a “tea party” protest and tells viewers he intends to begin organizing a “Chicago Tea Party,” galvanizes nascent “tea party” groups around the nation. Chicago radio producer Zack Christenson has already registered the Internet domain “chicagoteaparty.com” (see August 2008), and hours after Santelli’s rant Christenson puts up a “homemade” tea party Web site. A Chicago Libertarian activist, Eric Odom (see After November 7, 2008), puts up a similar site at “officialchicagoteaparty.com.” The next day, the short-lived “Nationwide Tea Party Coalition” forms. At the same time, a new Facebook group, “Rick Santelli is right, we need a Taxpayer (Chicago) Tea Party,” is created by Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity, and is administered by Odom. The Facebook page leads back to a site called “taxpayerteaparty.com,” run by Americans for Prosperity. Simultaneously, Brendan Steinhauser, the campaign director of FreedomWorks (see March 2, 2009) and another administrator of the Facebook group, begins organizing “tea party” groups—or actually continues his efforts, since on February 9, 10 days before Santelli’s broadcast, he had contacted a Florida activist who had attended a FreedomWorks training session and asked her to organize a protest in Fort Myers. Steinhauser later writes that the day after Santelli’s broadcast: “I just wrote this little 10 quick easy steps to hold your own tea party, wrote it up, and kinda was proud of it and sent it to Michelle Malkin. She linked to it from her blog.” Malkin’s blog is overwhelmed by the response. FreedomWorks staffers call activists around the country asking them to organize “grassroots” tea party organizations, and on March 9, FreedomWorks announces a nationwide “Tea Party Tour,” saying in a statement, “From [Santelli’s] desperate rallying cry FreedomWorks has tapped into the outrage building from within our own membership as well as allied conservative grassroots forces to organize a 25-city Tea Party Tour where taxpayers angry that their hard-earned money is being usurped by the government for irresponsible bailouts, can show President Obama and Congressional Democrats that their push towards outright socialism will not stand.” By February 27, the first official “tea party” events take place, organized by the Sam Adams Alliance, FreedomWorks, and Americans for Prosperity. Many of the original organizations will eventually be subsumed by, or merge with, national structures, again primarily organized and funded by FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and other right-wing lobbying organizations. Eventually, six nationwide networks will form (see August 24, 2010). [Huffington Post, 4/15/2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010] During this period, conservative media outlets such as the Weekly Standard will claim that the tea party movement was entirely spontaneous in its origins (see March 2, 2009). However, facts stand in the way of that claim (see February 15, 2009, February 16, 2009, February 17, 2009, February 18, 2009, March 13, 2009 and After, April 2009 and After, April 6-13, 2009, April 8, 2009, April 14, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 16, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 24, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6-7, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 28, 2009, July 3-4, 2010, August 30, 2010, and September 20, 2010).

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck has a special segment called “War Games” during the week’s broadcasts. In today’s show, he is joined by former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer (see February 1996) and retired Army Sergeant Major, Tim Strong. The three discuss what they say is the upcoming “civil war” in America, which, they assert, will be led by “citizen militias” made up of principled, ideologically correct conservatives. Beck says that he “believes we’re on this road.” The three decide among themselves that the US military would refuse to obey President Obama’s orders to subdue the insurrection and would instead join with “the people” in “defending the Constitution” against the government. [Salon, 2/22/2009] Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin’s blog “Hot Air” features an entry that calls Beck’s rhetoric “implausible” and “nutty.” [Hot Air, 2/22/2009]

Two of the signs being carried by ‘tea party’ protesters at the Santa Monica event. [Source: GayPatriot (.net)]Yasha Levine, co-author of a Playboy article alleging that the Rick Santelli “tea party” “rant” on CNBC was part of a pre-planned rollout of corporate-funded tea party organizations (see February 27, 2009), attends a tea party event at the Santa Monica pier. The event, planned as a “spontaneous” citizen protest of the Obama administration’s economic policies, was planned and supervised by Tony Katz, who organized it through a Facebook page. The event is planned to last 45 minutes, and consists of a quick “meet and greet,” three keynote speakers (an actor, a writer, and a comedian), and as a finale, a quick teabagging ceremony. Levine says the event’s timing is not conducive to attracting large numbers of protesters, being as it takes place at the beginning of a workday. However, she notes, it is quite conducive for media coverage: journalists would “get the material and be back in the office before noon, enough time to write and edit their segments to appear that same day.” Levine arrives late, but in time to witness Katz finishing his closing speech and event organizers passing out tea bags. She estimates the crowd size at about 50, “not what you would expect from a grassroots movement that supposedly tsunamied so fast that a whole network materialized in just a few days” (see February 19-21, 2009). Some protesters hold anti-Obama signs, others wave signs with anti-tax slogans. At least a third of the crowd, Levine writes, is made up of reporters and other “media types.” At 9:35, Katz exhorts the crowd to throw their tea bags into a pot of water (as throwing them in the ocean constitutes littering) and scream out their anti-tax demands. Levine observes: “It was a total sham, a front in order to get TV facetime. It worked, too. Fox News sent a camera crew. So did NBC. Koch [the Koch family, whom Levine has accused of clandestinely funding many tea party organizations] was teabagging the media, and the media loved it.” [Yasha Levine, 2/27/2009]

Michael Savage, a conservative radio host, calls President Obama a “dictator” as part of a larger diatribe against the president. He calls Obama “a young, articulate rabble-rouser” who “is espousing a message that I call ‘trickle-up poverty’.… Where it ends? I know where it ends, because I’ve studied history. I know where it ends. The signal as to when this begins, when the end begins, will be when he organizes a militia directly under his own control. He will not call it a militia. It will be called, perhaps, the ‘Ecology Corps’ or the ‘Environment Corps,’ or the ‘Global Warming Corps,’ or the ‘Energy Corps.’” Savage may be referring to Obama’s efforts to revive the moribund Americorps, a volunteer organization (see November 11, 2008 and March 31, 2009). “Whatever it will be called, they will all wear uniforms. They will either be blue denim or green denim. They will have the executive power under the ‘urban czar’ to come into your home without any court order to investigate your energy use, but they will be looking for other things as well. Would you have any chance to stand up to this army of Obamaites?” Savage asks, rhetorically, if he has “gone over the edge,” and then says: “I’ve gone over the edge before, and every time I have, I’ve been right eventually. I see the handwriting on the wall. Obama is a dictator.” Savage accuses liberals of failing to understand that any dictatorship, leftist or rightist, “is not going to be good for your children.” He then shouts, “Someone has to oppose this man.” He also claims that the White House “is going after” anyone who criticizes it, and repeatedly mixes his accusations of “government” persecution with “media” persecution of White House or Obama critics. “Fundamentally,” Savage concludes, “we have a dictatorship emerging.… Now I’ll make another prediction. I predict that very soon, Obama will create a crisis along the lines of the Reichstag Fire [the 1933 attack on the Reichstag by Nazi militiamen, who later blamed the fire on Communists, and used the attack to gain control of the German government]. I don’t know what form it will take. But I believe that once the minions are seen for what they are, Rahm Emanuel [the White House chief of staff] and his gang will set off a Reichstag Fire in this country of some kind, and they will” begin arresting US citizens without warrants much as President Lincoln did during the Civil War. “I will tell you as I sit here I fear that every night as I go to sleep.” Savage offers no evidence for any of his claims. [Media Matters, 3/4/2009] Two days later, Savage calls Obama a “neo-fascist dictator in the making.” [Media Matters, 3/6/2009] Savage has called the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board “sickening” (see May 18, 2004), accused Obama of being educated in a radical Islamic madrassa (see January 10, 2008 and April 3, 2008) and being a potential “radical Muslim” (see February 21, 2008), called Obama’s presidential victory “the first affirmative-action election in American history” (see February 1, 2008), accused Obama of being sympathetic towards the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese of World War II (see March 13, 2008), said that homeless Americans should be put in “work camps” (see June 6, 2008), called Obama an “Afro-Leninist” (see June 6, 2008), said that welfare recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008), accused Obama of using his grandmother’s death to conceal his “efforts” to falsify his Hawaiian birth certificate (see November 10, 2008), and accused Obama of planning to fire all the “competent white men” in government once he became president (see November 18, 2008). Other conservatives, including Fox News’s Glenn Beck, will accuse Obama of being a Nazi, or of intending to create a “Reichstag Fire” crisis to gain power (see September 29, 2009 and October 3, 2010).

Self-described “martial arts master, actor, and political activist” Chuck Norris adds his voice to the call by some right-wing leaders for armed insurrection against the Obama administration. Norris and others are calling for open rebellion, and for the military to refuse orders from their commander in chief. Norris claims that thousands of right-wing “cell groups” have organized and are ready to launch what he calls a “second American Revolution.” Days before, he jokingly told radio host Glenn Beck that he was ready to “run for president of Texas” after Texas secedes from the US (see March 3, 2009). In an article for the conservative Web publication WorldNetDaily, Norris makes the same claim in a far more serious tone: according to Norris, Texas was never formally a part of the US, and Texas will be the first of many states to secede from the union. The need for him to run for president of Texas “may be a reality sooner than we think,” he writes. “If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.” He justifies his call for another revolution—essentially overthrowing the federal government and replacing it with one more to his liking—by writing, “[W]e’ve bastardized the First Amendment, reinterpreted America’s religious history, and secularized our society until we ooze skepticism and circumvent religion on every level of public and private life.” He asks: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution? We the people have the authority according to America’s Declaration of Independence, which states: That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.” Norris has joined Beck’s nascent anti-government movement, “We Surround Them,” and writes, “Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation” when the group meets during a live telecast and series of “meetups” on March 13. Norris closes with the words of former Texas president Sam Houston, “We view ourselves on the eve of battle,” and finishes with a plug for his latest martial arts event in Houston, “Showdown in H-Town.” [Charlotte Examiner, 3/9/2009; WorldNetDaily, 3/9/2009] According to the website of “We Surround Them,” as of March 10, less than 30 sites have agreed to host meetings, a figure somewhat lower than the “thousands” Norris claims. The national unveiling of “We Surround Them” will take place on Fox News. [Charlotte Examiner, 3/10/2009]

9/12 Project logo. [Source: Springfield 9/12]Conservative radio and Fox News television host Glenn Beck tearfully announces the inception of the “9/12” project, which he claims is a nonpartisan effort to reclaim the spirit of cooperation and unity that suffused the nation on September 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. “We weren’t told how to behave that day after 9/11, we just knew,” he says. “It was right; it was the opposite of what we feel today.” With tears flowing down his cheeks, Beck asks, “Are you ready to be the person you were that day after 9/11, on 9/12?” He assures his viewers, “You are not alone,” and says that the project has already grown into “something that millions are now participating in.” The project is “not about parties or politics or anything else,” he continues, but “about proving that the real power to change America’s course still resides with you. You are the secret. You are the answer.” He apologizes for his on-air weeping, and, holding his hand over his heart, sniffles: “I just love my country, and I fear for it. And it seems that the voices of our leaders and the special interests and the media that are surrounding us, it sounds intimidating. But you know what? Pull away the curtain. You’ll realize that there isn’t anybody there. It’s just a few people that are pressing the buttons, and their voices are actually really weak. Truth is, they don’t surround us. We surround them. This is our country.” He tells his viewers to visit The912Project.com, the Web site for the new organization. Beck then cuts to his producer, Steve (Stu) Burguiere, broadcasting from a “massive gathering” in Hollywood, “one of the most liberal cities in the country.” Burguiere begins reporting from an empty room, and begins by saying, “There’s still no one here.” He reiterates Beck’s opening line of “You’re not alone, unless you’re me.” Beck says, “Well, it must be traffic or something.” [Media Matters, 3/13/2009; Media Matters, 9/11/2009] Days before, Beck had announced his “We Surround Them” movement (see March 9, 2009), featuring actor/martial arts expert and secessionist Chuck Norris. The two organizations seem to dovetail with one another, and with the “tea party” groups (see April 8, 2009). Bloggers at SaveTheRich (.com) later learn that the 9/12 movement is actually a creation of FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009), the conservative, corporate-funded “astroturf” organization behind the 2009 anti-health care protests. The organization begins planning for its September 12, 2009 march on Washington the same day as Beck announces his 9/12 project on Fox. SaveTheRich concludes that the entire project is a collusion between Fox News and FreedomWorks. Beck does not inform his audience of the connections between the organizations and his project. [SaveTheRich (.com), 4/17/2009; Media Matters, 9/11/2009]

Martha MacCallum. [Source: The Activity Pit]Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, host of Fox’s “straight news” show The Live Desk, airs clips of Vice President Joseph Biden taken during a September 2008 campaign event to falsely imply that Biden is contradicting the Obama administration’s current stance on the economy. MacCallum tells viewers that “after weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune. Take a look at what was said in recent interviews this weekend.” Fox then airs a clip of Biden telling an audience, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.” The clip is not from an interview held over the weekend, but from a campaign event held seven months before. MacCallum does not inform her viewers of the timing of the clip, nor does she note that Biden was criticizing Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s economic views, which he characterized as unrealistically rosy. Instead, she goes on to claim that the administration has fundamentally, and dishonestly, shifted its views on the economy from a positive campaign outlook to a more “doom and gloom” viewpoint. In the September 2008 campaign rally, Biden told a Michigan audience: “I believe that’s why John McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning—and this is a quote, ‘The fundamentals of the economy are strong.’ That’s what John says. He says that ‘we’ve made great progress economically’ in the Bush years.… I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn’t run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain.” Alongside the Biden clip, Fox also airs footage of Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. On March 15, Goolsbee told a Fox News Sunday audience that “the core strength of the economy is middle-class workers.” Fox airs that clip immediately after the Biden clip. What it does not air is Goolsbee’s statement just after the broadcast statement, in which he said, “Over the last eight years, before this president came into office, we saw an unbelievable squeeze on the middle class like nothing we have seen in decades.” MacCallum uses the clips to accuse the Obama administration of “singing… a bit of a different tune” now than during the campaign. [Media Matters, 3/16/2009] The next day, MacCallum apologizes for asserting the seven-month-old clip was recent. She tells viewers that Fox News “inadvertently used a piece of video of Vice President Biden saying that, quote, the fundamentals of the economy are strong. This video was from the campaign trail, when the vice president was a candidate, and was actually quoting Senator John McCain. When we get something wrong, we admit it. We did so yesterday, and for that, we apologize” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 3/17/2009]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, joined by National Review deputy managing editor Kevin Williamson, asserts that Obama administration members are working behind the scenes to move towards what they call a “one-world government.” Williamson tells Beck and their viewers that Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, belongs to a group that is “arguing for… the same stuff that the left is always arguing for, which is transferring wealth and power out of citizens’ hands and into the government’s hands.” Williamson continues: “You know, the left always needs an emergency because they can’t get this stuff done through normal democratic means. So, in the ‘30s, it was the Depression, and then it was World War II. Then it was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. And then after the Soviet Union fell apart, it became the environmental movement.” Beck responds: “Right. Let me—I’m going to have them take you someplace that I like to call ‘one-world government.’” Beck later says that Browner “was involved in a socialist organization” that “wants one-world government.” Williamson agrees: “Yeah, they’re big on what they call, you know, global architecture, transnational architecture, which is just another way of saying sort of UN-style bureaucracies that would be international in nature and would de-emphasize American power and global leadership.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Williamson are echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010).

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano hosts radio host Alex Jones on the online program Freedom Watch. Jones says that he has long pointed out “how hundreds of mainstream news articles a week are saying there is a new world order, a global government. It will be run by the very banks that are collapsing society by design, and we will pay carbon taxes to them.… [T]he good news is, I’ve never seen an awakening this big. And I’m seeing, you know, people like Glenn Beck talk about the new world order on Fox. I’m seeing you talk about it for years before him. We’re seeing [CNN host] Lou Dobbs talk about it. We’re seeing, you know, mainline talk show hosts—[radio host Rush] Limbaugh is even talking about global government now. [Radio host] Michael Savage is talking about how he thinks, you know, Obama may stage crises to bring in martial law.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Jones is echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O’Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).

Bill Hemmer. [Source: New York Daily News]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, host of Fox News’s flagship news program America’s Newsroom, hosts several segments touting the April 15 “tea party” protests (see April 8, 2009 and April 15, 2009). Hemmer notes protests in Florida and Ohio that occurred in recent days, and directs viewers to the Web site for America’s Newsroom for more information. He says: “Protesters, well, they waved flags and signs and with slogans like ‘Repeal the Pork’ and ‘Our Bacon is Cooked.’ I say, our bacon is cooked. They’re popping up literally all across the country now.… If you go to our Web site, you will find a growing list of these events, hundreds of photos, and a new tea party anthem that you will hear from the man who wrote it and recorded it next hour. And there’s a list of the nationwide Tax Day tea party events coming up on the 15th of April, which will be a huge deal for those organizations. So check it out online right now” (see October 13, 2009). The song is by Lloyd Marcus of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who has been on what he tells Hemmer was “a 40-city ‘Stop Obama’ tour.” Marcus’s song is extremely critical of President Obama’s policies and supportive of the “tea parties.” The lyrics are posted on FoxNews.com. [Media Matters, 4/8/2009]

Glenn Beck. [Source: New York Times]The New York Times profiles Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, describing him as a “rising star” and “one of the most powerful media voices for the nation’s conservative anger.” Beck’s show typically draws about 2.3 million viewers, putting him third among all cable news hosts behind fellow Fox conservatives Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Beck describes himself as identifying with Howard Beale, the mad “television prophet” of the 1976 film Network, and particularly Beale’s most famous line, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” [New York Times, 3/29/2009] (Media pundit Eric Boehlert calls Beck’s attempt to associate himself with Beale “nonsense,” and observes: “Beale’s unvarnished on-air rants… targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates, and the propaganda power of television.… Beale’s attacks were not political or partisan. Beck, by contrast, unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the new president of the United States. Big difference.”) [Media Matters, 4/7/2009]Apocalyptic Rhetoric - Though he insists he believes every word he says on his TV show as well as on his daily radio broadcast, Beck also calls himself a “rodeo clown” and an “entertainer” who reminds his listeners, “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.” (Beck is a former morning show disc jockey who regularly performs stand-up comedy in shows around the country.) The Times writes that Beck “is capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans.” He regularly preaches against liberal politicians, hosts segments entitled “Constitution Under Attack” and “Economic Apocalypse,” and sometimes bursts into tears. [New York Times, 3/29/2009] Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters will note in a later article that Beck regularly terms President Obama a Marxist, a socialist, and/or a fascist. [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] In a recent week-long segment titled “War Games,” Beck advocated for armed citizen militias to overthrow the government (see February 20, 2009), though he later denied such advocacy. America is “on the road to socialism,” he tells his viewers, and claims, “God and religion are under attack in the US.” He recently accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of setting up “concentration camps” for citizen dissenters, presumably conservatives. He has accused the Obama administration of trying to “indoctrinate… your child into community service through the federal government” [Media Matters, 3/27/2009] , says America is about to go through “depression and revolution” [Media Matters, 2/13/2009] , and, three days after the Times article is published, compares the administration’s actions to those in “the early days of Adolf Hitler.” [Media Matters, 4/1/2009] He will accuse the government of being what he calls “a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.” [Media Matters, 3/31/2009]Voice of the 'Disenfranchised' - Phil Griffin, the president of Fox News cable rival MSNBC, says of Beck: “That’s good dramatic television. That’s who Glenn Beck is.” Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says: “There are absolutely historical precedents for what is happening with Beck. There was a lot of radio evangelism during the Depression. People were frustrated and frightened. There are a lot of scary parallels now.” Conservative writer David Frum calls Beck’s success “a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility.” Beck’s shows are “for people who feel they belong to an embattled minority that is disenfranchised and cut off,” Frum adds. Fox News senior vice president Joel Cheatwood says Beck’s audience is “somewhat disenfranchised,” and adds, “[I]t’s a huge audience.” Author and media professor Jeffrey Jones says that Beck engages in “inciting rhetoric. People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something.” Beck denies inciting attacks on the government or any other citizens, saying that those “who are spreading the garbage that I’m stirring up a revolution haven’t watched the show.” Fellow talk show host Bill Maher recently accused Beck of producing “the same kind of talking” that led Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in 1995 (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995); Beck responded by saying in part: “Let me be clear. If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the ‘truth’ behind 9/11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those we don’t seem to recognize anymore, who kill in the name of Allah.” [New York Times, 3/29/2009] (The Times does not publish Beck’s next line: “There are enemies both foreign and domestic in America tonight. Call it fearmongering or call it the truth.”) [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] He describes himself as having to “be… the guy I don’t want to be—the guy saying things that are sometimes pretty scary, but nobody else is willing to say them.” Currently Beck is the voice of the “We Surround Them” movement (see March 3, 2009) and is part of the “Tea Party” or “teabaggers” civil protest project (see April 8, 2009). [New York Times, 3/29/2009]

Dick Morris discussing the economy on Fox News. [Source: Fox News]Conservative political pundit Dick Morris tells a Fox News audience that the recent G20 economic summit advocated a “global approach” to the current economic crisis, and discussed putting both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve under the control of the International Monetary Fund—a position not advocated or discussed by anyone in the Obama administration. He worries that there will soon be what he calls “a supernational authority run by bureaucrats, not by elected officials, that will be telling the elected governments, including the United States, what its [economic] regulations should be.” President Obama is far more amenable to the idea of allowing a multinational authority to control the US economy, Morris insists, and adds that Obama intends to preside over what he calls “a global redistribution of income, downward,” using environmental policy as “an excuse.” “We’re about to meet Barack Obama the internationalist,” Morris continues, “not fighting for American interests, but looking for global coordination.” He concludes, “Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘We’re going to kill ATF agents because the UN’s going to take over’—well, they’re beginning to have a case.” [Media Matters, 3/31/2009]

Twice in the same broadcast, Fox News airs a segment called “FOXFacts” that echoes almost verbatim claims made in a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan appears for an interview on Fox News’s Happening Now, a “straight news” broadcast, hours after his editorial appears in print, and is interviewed by co-host Jon Scott. The seven “FOXFacts,” which appear on-screen during the interview, are nearly identical to the claims and even the wording of Ryan’s editorial. In February, Scott passed off a Republican press release as independently researched news, even to the point of repeating a typographical error from the press release (see February 10, 2009). Ryan and the accompanying FOXFacts claim that the Republican budget proposal achieves lower deficits than the Obama plan, prioritizes national defense and veterans’ health care, rejects Obama’s “cap-and-trade scheme,” makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, lowers capital gains and dividend taxes, repeals estate taxes, and slashes corporate income taxes. An hour later, while interviewing Rob Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Scott again airs the same “FOXFact” graphics. [Media Matters, 4/1/2009; Media Matters, 4/1/2009; Wall Street Journal, 4/1/2009] Before appearing on Fox, Ryan admits to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that the Republican “budget plan” is nothing more than a “marketing document” containing few specifics (see April 1, 2009).

Rick Santelli, the CNBC commentator whose on-air “rant” is credited for sparking the right-wing “tea party” movement (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009), refuses to take part in the upcoming April 15 anti-tax rallies being put on across the country by various “tea party” organizations (see April 15, 2009). CNBC spokesman Brian Steel says Santelli is “not going and not in any way involved” in the protests. Fox News anchors Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity are joining with protesters in Sacramento and Atlanta, respectively, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to attend a rally in New York. Organizers say over 300 different protests will take place across the nation. Eric Odom, who owns a Chicago-based “tea party” Web site, says, “We have fully confirmed protests in 360 cities” and he is “very confident that all the protests will happen.” Odom predicts that the rallies featuring Cavuto and Hannity will bring at least 5,000 to 10,000 participants. He stresses that the protests will be made up of people from “all walks of life,” not just conservatives opposed to the Obama administration’s policies. Odom does not mention Santelli’s non-involvement. [Huffington Post, 4/2/2009]

Richard Poplawski. [Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]Pittsburgh resident Richard Poplawski kills three police officers after his mother calls 911 to have him removed from her home. According to a criminal complaint and affidavit, around 7 a.m. Margaret Poplawski and her son begin arguing over a dog urinating in the house; the argument escalates to the point where she calls the police to have him removed. When officers Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo arrive, Mrs. Poplawski asks them inside. Unbeknownst to his mother, Poplawski has donned a bulletproof vest and taken up an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, a .22 long rifle, and a pistol. From a position behind his mother, he shoots both officers in the head, killing them almost instantly. His mother hears the gunshots and flees to the basement, screaming, “What the hell have you done?” Poplawski shoots Mayhle again to ensure his death, then shoots a third officer, Eric Kelly, when he arrives to provide assistance. Kelly, critically wounded, manages to call for assistance; a fourth officer, Timothy McManaway, is shot in the hand as he arrives on the scene and attempts to help Kelly. Kelly will die at the hospital from multiple wounds to the torso and legs. Four-Hour Siege - Poplawski retreats to his bedroom and, as police assemble outside the home, fires at the officers. Police return fire, and between them, hundreds of shots are exchanged. During the siege, Poplawski calls a friend, Edward Perkovic, and tells him: “Eddie, I’m going to die today. Tell your family and friends I love them. This is probably the end.” The standoff between Poplawski and police lasts some four hours before officers finally persuade Poplawski to surrender; they enter the house and lead him out in handcuffs. Poplawski suffers at least one bullet wound during the exchange of gunfire. After the standoff, neighbors describe the scene as a “war zone.” Police have been called numerous times to the Poplawski residence to break up fights and disputes between mother and son. Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson will later say of the shootings: “I’d like to understand why. It’s senseless.” [Associated Press, 4/5/2009; New York Times, 4/5/2009; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/6/2009; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/8/2009] Poplawski is held without bail in the Alleghany County Jail, charged with the murder of three police officers, the shooting of a fourth, and eight counts of assault derived from his shooting at other officers. His grandmother, Catherine Scott, will tell a reporter that she is praying for her grandson, but: “My grandson did a terrible thing. There is no mercy for what he did.” [Associated Press, 4/5/2009; New York Times, 4/13/2009] Poplawski will later say he planned on forcing the police to kill him, but decided to surrender so he could write a book from inside prison. He will express no remorse for the men he kills. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/8/2009]White Supremacist, Anti-Semitic, Feared Gun Confiscation - The media will soon learn that Poplawski is a white supremacist who hates Jews and fears his guns will be taken away by the government (see April 4, 2009 and April 4, 2009 and After).

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck attempts to disavow any connection between his rhetoric and accused murderer Richard Poplawski, who killed three police officers in Pittsburgh two days ago (see April 4, 2009). Poplawski said he was influenced by Beck and other conservative talk show hosts who have repeatedly warned that the government intends to forcibly confiscate citizens’ guns (see April 4, 2009). Beck tells his listeners, “[T]he press, the blogs, everybody immediately went to, ‘This guy’s a conservative with guns that says Obama’s coming.’” But later in his show, Beck repeats his assertions, telling viewers that President Obama “will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he’ll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax your gun or take your gun away one way or another.” [Media Matters, 4/9/2009]

Screenshot of Fox News promoting the ‘Tea Party’ rally in Houston. [Source: Fox News / Media Matters]Republican lawmakers announce their intention to join with right-wing protesters on April 15, 2009, in what is envisioned as a nationwide protest against the Obama administration’s tax policies. The primary organizers are the think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, and right-wing bloggers such as Michelle Malkin. They say that under President Obama, taxes are “too high” and freedoms are being “eroded.” They have also called for Obama’s impeachment and refer to him as “Obama bin Lyin” and other derogatory nicknames. Republicans, Neo-Nazis, Secessionists Joining in 'Tea Party Protests' - Malkin has called the movement the “Tea Party Protests,” in an attempt to connect the protests with the American Revolution’s Boston Tea Party. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) is sponsoring legislation to honor the protests. Representatives David Davis (R-TN), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Rob Bishop (R-UT), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), John Fleming (R-LA), Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Bob Latta (R-OH), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Sue Myrick (R-NC), Bill Posey (R-FL), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) will attend local protests, as will Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) and former Representative J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ). Officials from Senator Bob Corker’s (R-TN) and Representative Sam Graves’s (R-MO) office will attend the rallies as well, and Representatives Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Jack Kingston (R-GA), and Tom Rooney (R-FL) are urging their constituents to attend tea party protests. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who heads American Solutions for Winning the Futures (ASWF) and who will speak at the New York City rally, is encouraging his supporters to join the protests, and has provided them with what he calls a “toolkit” of talking points. ASWF is funded by oil and energy interests, and led the recent “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign. ASWF has been an official “partner” in the Tea Party campaign since March. The Tea Party Protests are being joined by gun rights militias, secessionists, and neo-Nazi groups. Protests Orchestrated by Lobbyist Organizations and Promoted by Fox News - The protests are being heavily promoted on Fox News, which intends to hold all-day “news reports” on April 15 featuring several of its commentators, including Glenn Beck (see March 3, 2009), Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, and Greta Van Susteren, live at different venues. Many of the protest organizers’ Web sites feature one or more of the Fox commentators as part of their promotion efforts (see October 13, 2009). Beck is one of several Fox commentators and hosts who claims that the protests are “grassroots” organizations “spontaneously” led by “ordinary people,” but in reality, the protests are being orchestrated by two lobbyist-run and lobbyist-organized organizations, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. According to progressive news site Think Progress, “[t]he two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests.” Freedom Works staffers are coordinating conference calls among protesters and working with conservative organizers to give them what it calls “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country” as well as guides featuring talking points and instructions on delivering a “clear message” to the public and the media. Freedom Works has set up numerous Web sites, some of which Think Progress claims are deliberately constructed to appear as the work of amateurs, to promote the protests. In Florida, Freedom Works took over the planning of events. Americans for Progress is writing press releases and planning events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states. Think Progress calls these activities “corporate ‘astroturfing,’” which it defines as corporations’ attempts to orchestrate events appearing to be grassroots, citizen-led actions. Freedom Works is headed by former Texas Republican Representative Dick Armey, who is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper; Americans for Prosperity is headed by Tim Phillips, who is a former partner of right-wing activist Ralph Reed in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. Americans for Prosperity has organized numerous pro-oil company “grassroots” events. [Think Progress, 4/8/2009; Media Matters, 4/8/2009; Think Progress, 4/9/2009]

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